The Impossible Photo 1229


UPDATE

I am prepared to acknowledge that, given the gate design, they could have passed through different gates in exact synchronicity and this may be a red herring. I am leaving this post up here as it is good to acknowledge mistakes. Please read my updated post Skripals – The Mystery Deepens

Russia has developed an astonishing new technology enabling its secret agents to occupy precisely the same space at precisely the same time.

These CCTV images released by Scotland yard today allegedly show Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov both occupying exactly the same space at Gatwick airport at precisely the same second. 16.22.43 on 2 March 2018. Note neither photo shows the other following less than a second behind.

There is no physically possible explanation for this. You can see ten yards behind each of them, and neither has anybody behind for at least ten yards. Yet they were both photographed in the same spot at the same second.

The only possible explanations are:
1) One of the two is travelling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint
2) Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.

I am going with the Met issuing doctored images.

UPDATE

A number of people have pointed out a third logical possibility, that the photographs are not of the same place and they are coming through different though completely identical entry channels. The problem with that is the extreme synchronicity. You can see from the photos that the channel(s) are enclosed and quite long, and they would have had to enter different entrances to the channels. So it is remarkable they were at exactly the same point at the same time. Especially as one of them appears to be holding (wheeled?) luggage and one has only a shoulder bag.
I have traveled through Gatwick many times but cannot call to mind precisely where they are. Can anybody pinpoint the precise place in the airport? Before or after passport control? Before or after baggage collection? Before or after customs? The only part of the airport this looks like to me is shortly after leaving the plane after the bridge, and before joining the main gangway to passport control – in which case passengers are not split into separated channels at the stage this was taken. I can’t recall any close corridors as long as this after passport control. But I am open to correction.
Please read my updated post Skripals – The Mystery Deepens


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1,229 thoughts on “The Impossible Photo

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    • Bu axmoqlik

      The date stamp of what? The SIS system? The CCTV system? The Met’s system? They are passing through within a second of each other, any idea how much distance that equates to?

  • Julian Doyle

    You are never separated like that when you disembark at Gatwick – where are the other passengers? At one point you go thru doors single file but you would still see the glass doors and other passengers. There are small automatic metal bar doors open as they pass the. Never ever seen such doors at Gatwick. When my wife enters the UK she is photographed and fingerprinted at the desk. Where are these clean pristine photos if we are talking about identifying these 2
    BUT the most weird thing about these photos is that they are supposed to be from a fixed camera.
    BUT one of the photos has a different position – see top right black corner. This is not a fixed camera!!!.

  • SA

    The government’s case revolves on maintains a narrative that is fed by snippets of information that is released at times convenient to the current regime. The Police mainly release factual information even if doctored but bolstered by unverifiable ‘intelligence’ information that cannot be revealed and unverifiable. The accusations are made in international fora and aimed at orchestrated to rally ‘our allies’ to the cause of beleaguered ally. But this beleaguered ally is also beleaguered by its own self inflicted Brexit and perhaps soon no longer to be an ally.
    May and co think they can substitute trade with the EU for trade with Africa and the isolationist US under Trump.
    On the other side there is no attempt at resolution by deplomacy because the aim was disruption of deplomacy. The net result will leave the U.K. isolated and probably irrelevant to future major economic and security discussions. Very sad and misguided.

  • Yonatan

    In terms of fake stories about Russia we have:

    i) Litvinenko
    ii) Magnitsky
    iii) Invading Ukraine
    iv) MH17
    v) Assisting murderous tyrant Assad
    vi) Bombing carefully vetted moderate rebels in Syria
    vii) Interfering in US elections
    viii) Skripal affair
    ix) Amesbury affair

    Any more?

    That is an awful lot of BS presumably to be used for something big – an attempt to remove Russia from the UNSC via the General Council. Russia would no doubt see that as an existential threat to it’s national security. Dangerous times.

    • SA

      Interfering with Brexit
      Interfering with other European elections.
      Interfering with California power grid.
      Babichenko affair (own goal there).
      Anti WH propaganda.
      Ending lucrative oil trade between Daesh and Turkey.

      • John A

        And dont forget funding anti-fracking campaigns, anti-vaccination campaigns…..

        People in the west would love fracking and to buy US fracked gas at twice the price but for the pesky propaganda from Putin that brainwashes them into thinking injecting a chemical and water mix underground to smash rock and release gas is a terrible idea and that they should actually worry about potential pollution to waterways and earthquakes.
        Nobody would possibly oppose fracking but for Russian propaganda.

    • Hatuey

      The whole so-called Cold War which, as we all now know, was more about robbing third world peasants of resources rather than fighting the spread of Russian communism.

      That’s the biggest false flag operation in history… not counting religion. That said, there’s probably a good case for counting religion.

  • Vladimir

    > Note neither photo shows the other following less than a second behind. There is no physically possible explanation for this.

    These photos are from different passages. If you look at the original photos, you’ll see at the right bottom different red elements. On your photos they covered for some “strange” reason. And even on your photos angles of wickets at the left are closed differently.

    • N_

      They’re different channels, and there is nothing strange about the time stamps being the same.

      It’s interesting that the tag “MET POLICE” covers the red element in one photo. Did some clever clogs in the secret state want to encourage speculation that the photos were doctored, in order to feed misdirectional ideas into a “truth movement” similar to the 7/7 one? A lot follows when even a small number of people are successfully induced to ditch their critical faculties and believe what is demonstrably false.

      @Craig should and hopefully will post to say that his piece of speculation was successful in that the responses and discussion have allowed a strong conclusion to be drawn, namely that his hypothesis was false. This comment section has done a good job here.

      Report from a friend of mine who watches and reads a lot of news but is not a highly political person: she agrees that there is no credible motive for the Russian government attacking the Skripals but she also believes that the evidence published so far shows that they did it. (I don’t: I am just reporting this.) Her opinion may be widespread. British state psywar specialists will certainly be gauging how their propaganda is going down in the population, even if in psywar often you are in the dark to a large extent and you can’t know as much as you’d like to know about the effect of your effort. Their conclusion may well be that they’ve done all right on this one and they have convinced the British population that the GRU did it, probably on Kremlin orders. Next task coming up.

      The British media are now reporting that Britgov is preparing for war with Russia. They call it “cyberwar”, but most people have little understanding of either cyberwar or psychological warfare more generally, and to some extent this phrase serves to make it all seem like a game or like reality TV, the same as “deal or no deal” does for Brexit. (Thus the term “deal” isused for the Chequers proposal, and many journalists mindlessly repeat this, even though only minimal clear thought is required for a person to realise that the Chequers proposal is not a deal. That is so regardless of whether you have utter contempt for it or you think it’s the best thing since sliced bread.)

  • wild

    Did SU2585 Aeroflot route, mentioned in Met presentation, ever fly to Gatwick?
    According to Google search, this route is to Heathrow.

  • Andy Lambeth

    Dear Craig, I don’t know if anyone has noticed but the photo showing the pair walking along the pavement towards the camera (with a yellow line to their left) is also suspicious. If you look at the joins in the pavements there is one in the wrong place (2nd from the top on the right). I used to work with Photoshop a lot and to me it looks very much like it has been edited.

    • julian_n

      To clarify – it is 2nd from top in the cropped photo in Daily Mail – it is immediately behind the left shoulder of the right “suspect” as viewed in the photo or about five slabs up from the head of the grey-haired lady in bottom right.

      It is the sort of blurring I do when I use MS Paint to obscure a number plate of a car when I post it on internet. i.e. amateur!

    • N_

      Do you mean this photo? I’m guessing you’ve seen a cropped version and you mean the element I’ve rung round here. If so, the crack as it appears in the image that shows more pavement behind them does not look suspicious, because that crack lines up with ones further back.

    • Colin

      You can find the camera it was taken from in Google Street View and see that the paving slabs are really like that. The lines of the slabs alter as the road bends.

    • MightyDrunken

      This photo?
      A few guys on blogmire has suggested that the photo appears to be Photoshopped.
      “CCTV5 passes forensic tests but CCTV6 does not pass the tests I used – CCTV6 is not ‘guaranteed’ to be fake but it ‘probably’ is.”

      The shadows appear to be wrong for the purported time of day, probably early morning and not afternoon. I don’t know myself but others feel that photo is wrong.

      • Colin

        There aren’t really any discernible shadows in that picture. The day was overcast and wet. There is a bit of a reflection from the wet pavement but I don’t see any measurable shadows at all.

  • Peter wright

    Airport! Masses of people moving from an aircraft to the outside world ! Where are the rest of the passengers cramming the picture ?

    • Evs

      that’s not how ‘anything to declare’ works now, you do walk through an individual passage like this

      • Col

        Did they not declare their Novichok -the rotters. I guess they might have got ahead of the rest of the passengers because they appeared to have no luggage, and not even significant hand luggage that could have delayed their progress.

        • chris moffatt

          In which case why did it take them 1.5 hours to clear International Arrivals and Immigration?

    • D_Majestic

      | posted about this yesterday. At Sligo-yes.Lovely little airport. But a major one? Never.

    • Bu axmoqlik

      You are clearly unaware of how long it takes non-EU citizens to be processed through immigration these days.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Bu axmoqlik September 6, 2018 at 09:49
        That poses another question – they would both have been processed separately, so they would hardly have taken the exact same time to get through. Maybe the first one through waited airside till the other one got processed, then walked through adjacent or the same corridor (the same corridor would require photoshop).

  • Bu axmoqlik

    Don’t expect SIS to publish the full Russian Passports yet, they will have been shared with all authorities that imposed expulsions/sanctions in March/April though. With this and more evidence it’s unsurprising that foreign security sources endorsed this evidence. Couple this with the Russian’s reluctance to provide evidence from “their end” of the passengers passing through the gate to board their plane. These two clowns alias’s clearly appear on passenger manifests provided by Aeroflot yet they deny they travelled at all. The bottom line is article 21 of the Russian Constitution doesn’t allow for extradition of Russian’s which flies in the face of their offer to investigate this themselves.

    • N_

      Article 21 of the Russian constitution does not refer explicitly to extradition, but contrary to what I posted before it does seem to be the case that the Russian authorities interpret it as preventing the extradition of their own citizens. If so, Russia is in a bracket with France and Germany, which don’t extradite their own citizens to non-EU countries. Recall the case of Roman Polanski, the Hollywood film director and French citizen who drugged and raped a 13-year-old child in the US and then fled to France, a country which has an extradition treaty with the US but does not extradite its own citizens to that country.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ N_ September 6, 2018 at 10:23
        More power to France’s elbow! No country worth it’s salt would extradite their citizens to the land of the ‘Great Satan’.
        Now a poodle regime, sure; ‘Did you say jump, President Trump? How high?’

    • N_

      Oh dear! Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, has said the photos show the same corridor!

      OOPS!

      It’s hard to believe that GRU photoint capabilities are such crap.

  • Duncan

    sorry, but this is easily possible. in T3, just after customs you have 2 or 3 identical narrow corridors with automatic doors at either end. It’s perfectly possible for 2 people walking together to pick different channels and go through at exactly the same time. There is nothing obviously dubious about this.
    of course, there is absolutely no evidence that these men are in any way involved in what happened, and I don’t believe any of the story makes sense.

  • Deez Nutz

    Dont you guys see the freaking difference in the two images? Comon guys.. the doorway of the upper picture tips slidely to the left. This isnt the same camera at all… extremly stupit if scitlandyard cant figure this out. Better call Shurlock… or Ghostbusters?

  • Un individu louche

    I have just taken the two High Res images from the Metropolitan Police’s website (they are not High res BTW)

    Loaded them into Photoshop.

    Placed one above the other and reduced the opacity of the top one so you can see both.

    I have rotated the top image and repositioned it on top of the other. No other pixel manipulation has been used.

    The result can be seen here

    https://cdn1.imggmi.com/uploads/2018/9/6/68881dc489e03fe4825fd7cc7451fef2-full.jpg

    The corridors match almost exactly. I say almost because there are a few pixels difference but it is an amazing match. Even the lighting reflections on the walls by the rear barrier is identical.

    You will, however, note that the time stamps are now in very different places meaning that if they are taken in the same corridor the time stamp was added later.

    • Un individu louche

      Also the images supplied by the met are 695 x363 pixels and 692 x 366 pixels

      As they are not the same they have clearly been cropped (probably from a standard format). All security cameras in one security area would almost certainly have the same native resolution.

      There is no doubt that they have been cropped (even if from different lanes) but the time stamps remain in exactly the same place.

  • Dave

    If you’ve travelled through Gatwick many times you know these are the mantraps at the end of the exit.

    Second point the camera angles are different. If they’re doctored wouldn’t they use the same camera basic shot to “prove” this? They’re clearly not in the same location, they’re different – or Scotland Yard can instantly move cameras, which is about as likely as Usain Bolt taking the pictures.

  • Sharp Ears

    I switched on Radio 4 this morning as I couldn’t stand any more of the Skripal nonsense on the news channels It was even worse.. There was Paul Conroy with Colvin’s sister pushing his film Under the Wire. The anti-Assad rhetoric was poisonous.

    Lindsey Hilsum @lindseyhilsum
    3m
    Great review of #UndertheWire , the film about ⁦@reflextv⁩ and #MarieColvin’s fateful assignment in Syria. It’s an amazing, heart-stopping film. My biography of Marie, ‘In Extremis’, will be out on November 1st. (link: https://theartsdesk.com/film/under-wire-review-risking-everything-tell-world-truth) theartsdesk.com/film/under-wir…

    Paul Conroy @reflextv·
    2h
    Just off to do interview with Maries sister Cat Colvin at the @BBCr4today program.
    #underthewire
    #syria

    Dogwoof
    @Dogwoof· 30 Aug
    War correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer @reflextv risk their lives to share the story of civilians trapped in Homs. Q&A tour tickets for #UnderTheWire on sale now:
    ____
    Later in Conroy’s twitter, he says ‘There is no Idlib to run to’.

    They were followed by Mirvis’s Thought for the Day on ‘Jew hatred’ as he called anti-semitism.

    Followed by Matt Hancock, worse than Hunt, pushing his IT stuff for NHS records. I thought Sopel was quite good in countering this nonsense and the expenditure involved (he quoted BLiar’s £10billion) when there is an acute shortage of GPs anyway, but of course Hancock’s interests in the IT world were not mentioned

  • Pete

    It’s the exit leading directly to the visitors waiting area in arrivals hall. There are a number of channels with automatic glass doors
    It is therefore perfectly possible for both to be adjacent to each other in deprecate lanes at precisely the same time

  • Sharp Ears

    This latest on the Skripal case is being given by May to another Wicked Witch of the West, Karen Pierce, to promulgate in the UN today. I expect Ms Haley will be chiming in.

    Salisbury Novichok poisoning: UK to brief UN on Russian suspects
    57 minutes ago

    Media caption The trail taken by the Salisbury poisoning suspects
    UK officials will face their Russian counterparts later as they brief the UN Security Council on two men suspected of the Salisbury nerve agent attack.
    Prosecutors say there is evidence to charge the pair, who the PM said are thought to be officers from Russia’s military intelligence service the GRU.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45429894

    Last April, the Russian delegation referred to ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
    ‘Theatre of the absurd’: Russia rails against UK at UN, denies Skripal …
    https://www.sbs.com.au/news/theatre-of-the-absurd-russia-rails-against-uk-at-un-denies-skripal-role.
    6 Apr 2018 – Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told the council. … holds up a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” as he speaks …

  • Alan McThredder

    Hi Craig, I have great regard for you and your love of uncovering the truth behind the stories. You are a true journalist in the proper sense of the word. My question is: If these photos have been widely circulated as shown is it possible to get a friendly journalist to ask the question of their authenticity in Parliament just to get in on record? It would increase the exposure dramatically surely?

    • N_

      The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has already said the photos are from the same corridor. The problem is that this is total crap.

  • Gerry

    Oh dear. if you’re going to post fake photos, at least find some that look at least half decent.

    1. The photos the Met released didnt have the date and time stamps on them. They have been added by a conspiracy theorist.

    2. The seams on the panelling pass thru different places on the date and time stamp, which would prove they were photoshoppped in, or they were indeed in different channels.

    Better luck next time ya walloper.

  • John Morgan

    It would be interesting to see any cctv of these people leaving through the airport on their way back to Russia ? ?
    I heard (Sir!) Mark Rowley former Assistant Commisioner for ‘Specialist Operations’ talking on Radio 4 ‘s Today prog.where he said ‘ microscopic amounts of novichok are highly dangerous’ .,although its been stated that there was evidence of this highly dangerous weapon being found at the B&B where the suspects stayed in London. This reminded me of the previous contradictions about ‘evidence’ in a previous article on this blog.

  • wild

    A “producer” named “Michael Killigan”, posted in Facebook Alexander Petrov and Ruislan Boshirov are actually actors “Paul Collinson” and “Jeffrey Fields”, from 2000s TV series “KGB Spy”, shown in screenshots from named series. The fb post was since taken down. I wonder if this post was a prank, or has some merit?

    • Paul Barbara

      @ wild September 6, 2018 at 09:25
      Pity you didn’t get screenshots – I can find sweet FA about any of them on LinkedIn or facebook, or in general searches.
      I can’t even find anything of the 2000’s TV series ‘KGB Spy’.
      Does anyone remember such a TV series?

  • Mark the Skint Sailor

    It could just be that the authorities want to hide the actual time, or they’ve just made it look like a CCTV photo for appearances sake because that’s what people expect.

    It could be they knew they were on their way into the UK, that they were GRU and that’s surveillance footage made to look like ordinary CCTV. The thin jetway is an issue, unless it was a picture taken at another time elsewhere and mocked to look like a CCTV picture. Although a thin jetway does force people into single file and makes face recognition easier.

    The other possibility is it’s a message. A message the UK are sending to the Russians via the pictures. It could be that there’s a third person who did land on that time and date, or the time and date has some significance.

    Bloody convoluted these spies!

    But the clumsy disposal of the nerve agent suggests two pretty lowly, clumsy and not very good spies were sent on a “foolproof” mission to kill a Russian traitor. Thick and disposable would sum the pair up. The fact they used a method that could have affected a lot more people than the primary target, that they didn’t realise his daughter was present, that they disposed of the nerve agent in a way that kept it active (rather than say, throw it in a river or drain to disperse and degrade) shows a level of ineptness. Perfect cover of course: a couple of known GRU oafs out to spy on Salisbury, just miles from Porton down. Who would guess the Skripals were the target?

    • MaryPaul

      Did you read my post? That there may be another Russian sleeper agent undercover in Salisbury? It slipped out yesterday in a comment on MSM by an academic specialising in espionage etc. I wondered if it was a carefully placed leak.

    • joeblogs

      Ah, yes, ‘The Third Man’ – one of my favourite films – screenplay from the novel by Graham Greene. Brilliantly atmospheric, all in black and white, an filmed on location in Vienna not long after WWII. The theme tune played by Anton Karas completes it.

  • MarvellousMRchops

    Why has it taken so long for these photos to be released? Surely airport security would be the first place you would look – starting with flights from Moscow. So if the two were identified on day one then the hotel they stayed at would have also been identified. As we now know traces of ?? have been found at said hotel – has this hotel been closed for 4 months?

  • Jack

    The two guys might have walked out through 2 different gates?

    If you take a look at this:
    http://www.moonofalabama.org/images6/novishot1.jpg
    and compare with this:
    http://www.moonofalabama.org/images6/novishot2.jpg

    Now, you clearly see that there are a red object or sticker at the very lower right, but its two different object/stickers.
    One is a red line and one is more of a red square.
    Besides there are a black object in the left upper corner on second picture that is not present in picture #1.

    What does this show? Perhaps that there are 2 different gate they walked past?

    Not sure how those CCTV camera works, might take a snapshot on the person walking by, the blue-guy jacket is shorter and thus the photo might be framed differently by the camera automatically?

  • Yaggi Boom

    They did the same in the 7/7 bombings CCTV, obviously altered images to fit the narrative. Anyone interested in the obvious state involvement in that event can see the excellent ‘Ripple Effect’ and its follow up on You Tube. The government have never heard the aphorism “You just couldn’t make this shit up” because they do make it up as it goes along or to suit their needs.

  • JJ

    Craig guessed it right; Norwegian proved it – see his two comments page 7. This is the smoking gun on the whole Skripal affair.

  • Neil

    It’s the exit from customs to groundside.
    Passengers are split into separate exit channels.
    This is no mystery.

  • Paul Marten

    Hi Craig,
    It should be possible to determine if it is the same camera that took the image.
    Two separate fixed CCTV cameras in two separate corridors would not have exactly the same aspect view of the corridors as there will always be small differences in their positioning.
    An image analyst should easily be able to tell from the slight differences in the aspect or not whether it was the same camera so I’d advise getting one to look as this will settle this once and for all.

    • Jack

      There are 2 different angles as you say, thats why we see the small differences in tilt etc.
      I think there are bigger questions to ask than this, quite obvious one.

  • PB

    These are the none reversible gates you go through — once you get through them you can’t go back.

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