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
Option 3 is that the CCTV clock was broken, and if that were the case and these were doctored photos, it’s complete amateur hour for not addressing that…
For all the nonsense the government has spewed about the Skripal poisonings, I’m probably willing to accept that these two Russians did arrive at Gatwick on March 2nd on a regularly scheduled flight from Moscow. How it adds anything to the government’s narrative is completely beyond me.
Aeroflot does not fly to Gatwick. Rossiya, an Aeroflot subsidiary, does fly to Gatwick, but not from Moscow.
That’s interesting .
Pretty sure they codeshare though. My missus had an SU flight last month, but I think one of the legs was on a Rossiya aircraft
i for one am not willing to accept at least 2 things… the passports were russian or that the 2 men are russian..
fake passports are a popular tool of intel agencies.. as for whether they are russian or not – hard to know.. they could be working for anyone for all i know..
It may not be a litteral meaning of the word ‘passport’ photo. You supply a passport style photo with your visa application, which might then be scanned and printed in one form on the the visa itself, but Border Force may keep a better quality scan from the original supplied photo.
Option 4.
Just like me. You can.
1. upload the photos to a software.
2.Pull the EXIF metadata from the photos those morons put out.
3. And see the photos were doctored/tampered with.
4. After uploading the (2) photos to read the EXIF metadata. It concluded the photos are photoshop and the version type photoshop that was used.
5. Those ‘intelligence’ agencies are sloppy. A pity.
Mr. Murray, you gotta check the work of Fontanka’s investigative journalists:
https://www.fontanka.ru/2018/09/05/075/
They got hold of the Aeroflot passenger lists and started cross-referencing things, eventually nailing down the two guys. They had been flying all over Europe for years, and the really interesting bit comes when their backgrounds were checked…
Mr. Boshirov was born in Tajikistan (and his name is distinctly non-Russian too, at that, so he’s definitely a Tajik) and lives a secluded existence in a run-down neighborhood of Moscow – his neighbors never see him around and he just appears to be very shifty.
Mr. Petrov is a Russian biochemist who works for the big Microgen pharmaceutical laboratory. Petrov apparently flew to London in early 2018 too, for unknown reasons, many months before the Skripal incident occured.
Interesting stuff, going by your paraphrasing.
I’ve put it thru google translate
The British authorities named the names of alleged poisoners of the Violins, published photographs with their movements. Despite the mature age, the biographies of men are stingy and give a hoax, which does not exclude the British version of the fictitious names and work of the suspects on Russian intelligence.
According to official data, Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov flew on March 2, 2018 from Sheremetyevo to London Gatwick Airport. According to Fontanka, 150 passengers were registered for the flight of Aeroflot SU2588.
The suspects bought tickets on foreign passports of the “65” series, the document numbers differ by the last digit: … 1297 and … 1294.
Apparently, in the hands of Boshirov and Petrov already had return tickets, and for two consecutive flights from Heathrow to Sheremetyevo – evening on March 4 and night 5-th. The British authorities believe that the suspects used the first.
There are almost no open sources of information about Boshirov. According to the “Fontanka”, he was born on April 12, 1978 in Dushanbe, was registered in Moscow in a 25-storey house on Bolshaya Naberezhnaya street.
In 2015, he was brought into two executive proceedings for automobile fines received with a difference of three days, on July 20 and 23. The oddity is that the production numbers are not in order. The first assigned 433048, the second – 432322, although they were issued by one unit – the interdistrict department of bailiffs to collect administrative fines number 1 in Moscow. On the portal of the magistrates of the capital there are no cases of administrative violations against Ruslan Boshirov. Also it is not in the database of executive production.
“Fontanka” phoned long-term residents of the “Boshiro” house on the Great Embankment. They live on the same stairwell. “In the apartment you named, only an elderly woman lives,” the correspondent replied. “We carry her money, she collects for cleaning the cleaner.” A man was never seen in the apartment and was not seen at the entrance. We can only assume that this is the son of the hostess, who is registered at the address, but who has never lived here. ”
Boshirov’s network activity is no different either. The pages created under this name and last name in 2014 are empty. On Facebook, Boshirova has one friend registered, a girl from Ukraine. The profile “VKontakte” contains information that Boshirov graduated in 2004 from the geography department of Moscow State University in the direction “Hydrology of the land
According to Fontanka, Boshirova and Petrova, foreign passports (conventional, non-biometric) were issued about two years ago when they began to issue forms of the 65th series. These passports often flew to Europe. From September 2016 to March 2018 they visited Amsterdam, Geneva, Milan, repeatedly – Paris. Alexander Petrov at least once before the case, Salisbury was in London – from February 28 to March 5, 2017.
Petrov is even less known. According to the documents, he was born on July 13, 1979 *. A person with such a date of birth and a given name can be found in the list of employees of the national manufacturer of immunobiological preparations – the FSUE NPO “Microgen”. It was created in 2003 by the merger of fourteen enterprises of the immunobiological industry. The structure of “Microgen”, subordinate to the Ministry of Health, includes nine branches.
According to the British anti-terrorist police, Boshirov and Petrov are pseudonyms, their personalities are legendary. Their real names are allegedly Scotland Yard. According to Prime Minister Teresa May, the suspects serve in the GRU of the Ministry of Defense.
Petrov and Boshirov are charged with four charges: conspiracy to murder Sergei Skripal, attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and police officer Nick Bailey, storage and use of the poisoning substance “Novice” in violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, deliberate infliction of grave health damage to the Violinists.
Earlier, Scotland Yard tracked in detail the movements of Boshirov and Petrov through the territory of Great Britain, since their arrival in Gatwick on March 2 before departure from Heathrow on the 4th. The suspects stayed at the London Hotel City Stay Hotel, where they allegedly found traces of the “Novice”, went to Salisbury on March 3 and 4. The poisonous substance to the UK was delivered to the bottle – simulator of the bottle of perfume “Premier Jour” Nina Ricci.
* Clarification: the date of birth of Alexander Petrov was incorrectly stated in the material. According to the documents, he was born on July 13, 1979, and not on the 31st.
Reference:
Former Russian intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter were unconscious in the British Salisbury on March 4, 2018. The British authorities believe that the family was poisoned by the “Novice” – a nerve agent developed by Soviet scientists. Later, the resident of Amesbury Charlie Rowley and his companion were poisoned. Presumably the couple found a bottle of poisonous substance in the park, where they took away the Fiddles. Categorically denies accusations of poisoning. The United Kingdom and nearly 30 other countries have sent Russian diplomats. Moscow responded with symmetrical measures.
Alexander Ermakov, “Fontanka.ru”
‘Mr. Petrov is a Russian biochemist who works for the big Microgen pharmaceutical laboratory.’If true..Wow!The chemical expert.The lab?
Obviously only idiots would send the an expert in nerve agents abroad to commit an attack in person.
If some of this information were true, my impression get stronger that S Skripal and probably even more so J Skripal had some contact, probably on behalf of MI6/SIS, with some russian gangsters, and that they mishandled a delivery of “stuff” or betrayed the gangsters.
Consider this: the official story about the second set of victims is that they thought the sealed bottle they found (which implies there were two bottles, why?) was perfume and they sprayed themselves, or just the woman, with it. Both should have died instantly if that was a nerve agent. Then most likely it was something toxic but not a nerve agent.
Most likely that it’s a tissue of lies.
@ Adam Clifford September 5, 2018 at 20:46
I suspect someone found the wrong Alexander Petrov:
‘Microgen offers a complete line of Wipes, RTU’s, Concentrates, and Super concentrates’:
http://www.microgeninc.com/about-microgen/
Although ‘wipes’ could be for doorknobs…
Well that proves it. Mr. Petrov is spreading Novichok around to improve sales of wipes. The best thing to clean up a chemical weapon spill.
No, man, Microgen as in Микроген, the Russian pharmaceutical laboratory: http://www.microgen.ru
Nothing to do with wipes and stuff, but a lot to do with biochemistry and all of that jazz.
The page cited by Papa Doc to is in Russian, Google provid a surreal translation here:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fontanka.ru%2F2018%2F09%2F05%2F075%2F
So are they possibly the Russian version of Breaking Bad?
If you look at picture number 2 left bottom , you can see a small bit of the date in a box that was cropped out . The first picture is more cropped at the bottom and you can’t see any of the same date.
It’s the same corridor , no doubt about it , same features throughout . Plus , two people travelling together do not take separate corridors .
Is it strange these men went to Salisbury ? Yes it is . It is also strange that they go there by public transport during snow chaos and that they get caught on all cctv possible without any attempt to conceal themselves , that they had no time to check Skripal ‘s routine on Saturday and that they run away by train but before they spare some time shopping in Salisbury , that haven for shopping, without a care in the world .
Someone made sure these men came to the UK on these dates , that they went to Salisbury ( double agent central and home to main double agent recruiter Pablo Miller ) , so that they were caught on cctv precisely when and where they were .
It’s a different tunnel! I bought into it for about 10 minutes but look at it with a Spot the Differences head on… the angle of the camera is different… lighting is different…
Courtesy of crude photo manipulation software!
They’re pretty hazy images as well.
It looks like Salisbury can afford a better CCTV system than Gatwick judging by the images (on the BBC site) purporting to be them at Salisbury. Except they look like they are surrounded a haze at Salisbury blurring the line between them and the background. Perhaps that’s the Russian transportation machine!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45421445
They are not walking through the same corridor, look closer. They look very similar but the two images are far from identical
Ok whats the difference?
You can also notice via the source here
http://news.met.police.uk/images/cctv2-equals-image-of-boshirov-at-gatwick-airport-at-15-00hrs-on-02-march-2018-1407997
695 x 363 pixels
VS
692 x 366 pixels
(they are in fact cropped)
I suspect clicking on that link logs your IP address on a Met server and you then get added to a watchlist. All they need then is a CCTV image of you to tag with.
The photographs are at different angles. There is an obstruction to the camera’s view at the top left of the top photo that is not present in the bottom photo. There is a dark mark on the large panel on the left of the top photo, under the ‘8’ of 2018, that is not missing on the bottom photo. Either the timestamps have been altered and the camera was moved between the times those photos were taken, or they were taken in different corridors, or some combination of those factors.
Not necessarily. You can very easily rotate a photograph with photo manipulation software.
If as they say they arrived on alias passports how can they be definite who they are within the Russian secret service?
Indeed if they know their real names why not use them?
This case stank from the first and the stench is only getting worse.
Personally my money has always been on mossad as a frame up to get at Putin and get him out of Syria.
Saw this on Moon of alabama. The pictures of the 2 men released by the the Police are said to be from their passports. I have just taken a quick look at the Wikipedia page for Russian passports –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_passport#The_Russian_Federation
Note that on the non biometric passports the pictures have a seal over them, whilst the biometric passports do not. This indicated the passports are biometric. Not only do we not have the actual images of the passports, we do not have the biometrics either. Given that this information would be valuable in finding these “suspects” and would not in any way jeopardize the investigation, I can only conclude that either a) the Police know these are not actual suspects or b) the Police are deliberately withholding vital information, either way I believe this amounts to an Attempt To Pervert The Course of Justice which is a very serious criminal offence.
Posted by: TJ | Sep 5, 2018 2:12:22 PM | 6
Of course Police withholding details from the public does not amount to an attempt to pervert the course of justice, that’s ridiculous. The police are under no obligation to divulge details of an investigation to the public at all. Get a grip!
Upon very close examination, it seems to me that these two pictures are NOT as they might initally may appear i.e. both taken from the same camera in the same place but cropped slightly differently respective to the floor and ceiling – as you would do to ‘centre’ a moving subject in a stationary frame.
Looking carefully in particular at the (assumedly) vertical doorframes behind the chrome barriers behind the subjects implies that actually these are taken from cameras pointing downard at slightly different angles, and thus probably not occupying the exact same location in spacetime. 😉
what do you think, now that it has been pointed out?
p.s. As a highly experienced system administrator, I will also say that is not uncommon for these kinds of systems to be largely unmaintained for extended periods (months/years) and the software based clocks not to be set accurately since timings do drift.
Respect & Peace.
anon.
There are some other possibilities.
1) The two photos look vertically cropped to form a letterbox shape. Perhaps there is some omitted information in the original frames that could help explain the coincidence.
2) At the bottom of the 2nd photo is an extra date stamp. Perhaps the other two larger date/time stamps are not on the original recording but come from a Met Police video player. This could perhaps explain the coincidence of using exactly the same time.
3) The camera angles in the two photos are clearly different although the backgrounds are identical. They could be the same corridor with repositioned or different cameras close to one another, but the more obvious explanation is that the suspects used two identical corridors at the same time which makes the same exact second in the clips an understandable coincidence.
I love Craig but I fear that Kay Burley is going to have a field day debunking his theory tomorrow.
Not sure of your point 2), Rob. If the date / time stamp comes from a Met Police video player, still the question remains why the time would be the same? The pictures couldn’t have been cropped simultaneously or are you suggesting something else?
if thats a fixed camera why do the photos are to be from a very slight different angle also note the swing gates to the right hand side one gate opens parallel while in the other photo it opens even further and everything seems to be at a slightly different angle that is why i am questioning about the camera being in a fixed position either the room moved or the camera did
You don’t install a camera absolutely perfectly to within 0.05 degree alignment tolerance. Both are perfectly fit for purpose.
Well done for spotting this, I did check this website hoping for some insight.
But still, I expect that these two people are Russians, that they arrived and left when stated, and that they visited Salisbury, as suggested. I even expect that they are Russian secret service agents, as this was probably checked too.
What is still inexplicable to me is why two trained agents would stage the possibly worst assassination plot. Why fly from Moscow (to be picked up more easily on the cameras); why no disguise while walking in Salisbury (hats and dark glasses could have helped a bit); why throw the bottle with the poison in the park; why use a poison “made in Russia”, out of all methods to kill a person; why leave before checking that the job is done (as if the result didn’t matter)? Looks like they wanted to make sure they would be caught. So I assume that they actually wanted to be caught…
If they only know their aliases how come they are certain they are GRU agents? Did they use a GRU corporate credit card at the hotel? The train? Did Aeroflot tell the police that they should not worry as these guys are GRU?
What is the point of a Parliament stuffed full of barristers if nobody bothers to cross examine these statements from the PM
the camera is rotated slightly between the shots too, the clock remains horizontal so doesn’t seem like the finished image has been rotated. anyway, surely they released the video clip this came from so we can see them together?
Obviously not the same corridor. Cameras are a different angles.
The time and date obviously isn’t of when the shots were taken, it is nearly an hour and a half after landing. I would suggest that it is when the CCTV footage was committed to data archiving, or the time when individual still shots of each passenger were automatically extracted from the CCTV footage.
That seems like a sensible assumption. Mind you, we haven’t seen the Zapruder footage yet.
This can’t be right. The Met statement explicitly acknowledges that the photos were taken at the same time:
“The first CCTV image (timed at 16.22 on Friday 2 March) shows the man we know as “Petrov” arriving at London Gatwick airport.
“The second image, also time at 16.22 on Friday 2 March, is of the man we know as “Boshirov” at Gatwick.”
The whole purpose of time stamps on CCTV video is to provide exactly this information.
Notice that the faces are centered on both pictures. Either there is a mechanical pan and tilt, or more plausibly a digital horizontal and vertical cropping of a larger digital image to achieve the centering. That can be done automatically. I have worked on the digital capture of face images for 3d reconstruction for 20 years to I am confident that it can be done automatically. Such automatic croping would account for the slightly different positions of peripheral features.
Not that such a cropping procedure would be advantageous to deal with the problem of ensuring that people of different heights were centered in the picture
Or that these are stills grabbed from video and the frames where the faces are centred were selected for that reason.
They are in very close to the same position on the floor when photographed which could be done by an automatically triggered camera that saves a frame when the person goes through the same position in the corridor.
My question is simple. This is said to be Gatwick. Where is everyone else? If it was Knock airport, or better still Sligo-then yes, just possibly. As it is-well, Erm….
Variation on a theme.
chock-a-block
ADJECTIVE
British – Crammed full of people or things.
Origin – Mid 19th century (originally in nautical use, with reference to tackle having the two blocks run close together): from chock (in chock-full) and block.
Etymology is a particular fascination of mine. The expression “chockablock” (as well as its hyphenated analogues) is almost certainly nautical in origin, but not for the reasons you might suppose.
The older instances of “choc-ness” are invariably variations of “choc(k)full(e)”; there is no “bloc(k)-ness” until recently. Also, chockablock usually connotes a generalised idea of busyness, rarely conveying a cramming or crowding together specifically of people or things, eg “Central London was chockablock with traffic this morning”, “It’s (or:I’ve) been chockablock at work all summer”. So…
Four years in Ankara, Turkey and a handy grasp of modernTurkish to the rescue. Chockablock (almost) certainly comes straight from “çok kalabalık”. This expression, together with such as “buyurun”, “yane”, “güle güle” and, of course, “çok güzel” is one of those you become familiar with after a day or two in country.
In modern colloquial Turkish it means, with all nuancing, precisely “chockablock”, (and is pronounced remarkably similarly).
Etymologically, and literally, çok kalabalık means “full of fish” which is (almost certainly) how it passed into English quite a long time ago. Enough!
Apologies: as said, etymology is a (bit too much of a) fascination.
Got a bit carried away there with my etymology there. I forgot to mention that “çok” in Turkish means “very”, eg “çok pahalı” means “very/too expensive”; “çok güzel” means “very nice” and are hideously overworked expressions in both languages.
Really interesting contribution. Thanks.
The one I gave was from the OED if I remember correctly.
Looking at the blue plates on the gates, I seem to make out a ’41’ on the lower left (to us), which I cannot readily seen on the other picture, and an up arrow on the other gate that I cannot readily make out in the other.
Also the camera in the upper pic. is tilted counter-clockwise.
My money’s on two different lanes, but it’s a close call: it’s very hard to find clear differences between the two lanes.
Remarkably similar nose…
Same size shoulders…
Can`t be too difficult to add some facial hair..?
The photo of the two men at Salisbury Station also looks a little “off” to my, modestly trained, eye. There’s something odd going on at the back where something appears to obscure the regular vertical bars. Certainly, the two halves of the image have very different contrast values. The deepest shadows at left, are nowhere near as dark as the shadows on the right. Still, at least the CCTV was working. There don’t appear to be any images, as yet, of the suspects clearly in and around Salisbury city centre. Work still in progress?
I checked with The Guardian’s version of the two photos and lo and behold they had chopped the bottom of both photos so as not to see the data. Perhaps they did not want to confuse their readers more than necessary.
Well, rather bottom-choppers than the usual MI6 head-choppers.
On another note, I was wondering if the photo could have been taken in one of those retractable tunnels that go out directly to the planes, though they are generally rather wider and may not have cameras.
The thing that stands out to me here is the white balance / ambient light colour which looks different in each of the photographs. The top one is cooler with more blue which usually indicates more natural light was around, assuming both cameras are identical with same settings, etc.
The skin colour in both looks warm though, and if anything I’d say in the top one it looks warmer which is strange. Skin is very susceptible and responsive to ambient light so that you would expect the guy in the top one to look paler if the ambient light was of a lower temperature. Of course, that assumes both people have the exact same skin tone.
It’s my view that these photographs were probably taken by the same cameras in the same place but at different times — there’s too many similarities in the surroundings to assume otherwise. I’d guess the top one was taken during the day when there was natural ambient light bouncing around. The bottom one was possibly taken at night or at a time of year when there was a lack of natural light.
I’d say I’m about 90% sure of the above. That leaves some room for doubt but I just can’t believe that these tunnels could possibly be so identical. You’d expect one or the other to have something different, a mark on a wall, a slightly different layout, some paint spill, stain, blemish, or something.
Then there’s the coincidence of them both reaching the exact same point in the tunnels at the same time (assuming identical tunnels). That’s got to be 1000 to 1, at least. And if they were traveling together, why not walk one behind the other in the same tunnel? Difficult to explain all that.
The only difference in the photographs is the colour temperature and the angle. Tilt would explain the angle difference, btw. I’m an experienced architectural photographer from a previous life (actually, I’m experienced in various photography fields). My explanation for the tilt is that some cleaner or someone possible nudged the camera when wiping the lens or maybe it creeps down slowly by itself over time (I’ve experienced this myself).
I wouldn’t bet my house on it but I’d bet my car. These photographs were taken in the same place at different times.
“I’d say I’m about 90% sure of the above. That leaves some room for doubt but I just can’t believe that these tunnels could possibly be so identical. You’d expect one or the other to have something different, a mark on a wall, a slightly different layout, some paint spill, stain, blemish, or something”
Exactly my take — see above.
Yet, spot the difference on the blue plates affixed to the gates.
Craig’s point is a good one, but not the only one. If the names are aliases, as May claims, how do we know they are even Russians? Ah, the passports are genuine Russian passports they say. Well, we know others, who’ve used stolen foreign passports, don’t we? For example, the Mossad guys who flew to the Gulf on stolen passports, and murdered that Islamist in Abu Dhabi. It’s not that difficult to get genuine blank passports – how many political refugees have managed to get out through buying a passport on the black market? Must be many thousands since the 2WW.
I would say we’re not really any better off than before. Just more “details” that can be put in the media. More objections will come out in the next few days.
The statement that Theresa May made in Parliament this afternoon, about the Novichok poisonings (and she made this statement under Oath) is a classic example of a failing government, and a government that is about to fall.
The fact that May did this for purely political purposes, with absolutely no regard for the British people (none of whom want to be nuked out of existence by Russia), shows what a complete bunch of scumbags, psychopaths (add whatever you want) presently rule us.
These creatures will be gone by Christmas; I can almost guarantee it.
What I can’t guarantee is Nuremburg-type trials for all these cockroaches who have taken over public life and have killed millions of people.
Welcome back. We can only hope.
I don’t absolutely recall this feature being in Gatwick, but the ‘corridors’ look to me like the non-return gates that are installed in a number of airports between different control areas – the ‘gate’ area on arrival, and spaces such as immigration, transfer between gates and/or baggage retrieval.
Note the little swing barriers both where the two men are, and a couple of yards behind them at the entrance. These are generally motion-triggered, so you just walk through and they open if you are going the right way, but they bar your way in the other direction. Some places have sliding doors. If I was going to install still photo cameras to grab images of everybody coming off planes, this is a great spot – you have a well controlled position, and a sensor that will trigger the camera at the right time. FWIW, with insubstantial barriers like these, there is probably a camera looking the other way too, or doors at the end that close before you get there.
So – the scenario would be that these two were walking together, and went through separate gates side by side, which would be natural; these gates are often in sets of 2-4 (or more) to allow the necessary flow. It would be not at all surprising that parallel gates would look extremely similar. It’s a tiny bit flaky that you cannot see anyone behind them – it implies they were either well in front of any other passengers, and at the back of any group, but not conclusive in any way.
I totally agree.
These corridors are at Gatwick arrivals before you get into the main lobby in the North Terminal – I’m sure in the South too.
The two cameras are obviously both wide angle (fish eye) but due to different positions the effect on the vertical partitions is markedly different. Also a dark shadow on the partition on the left behind the time stamp in one pic but not the other.
I think they split up, went through two single-person corridors, and got snapped at the same time. Nothing more than that.
The dark shadow you describe is odd. It is much more blurry than the vertical stripe on the wall next to it, which is in focus. If it is really a patch on the wall not an artifact of post processing it should be as in focus as the vertical stripe. The dark mark has the characteristics you get from using a gaussian blur when touching up a digital image.
Was there no cc tv camera on the house of a former Russian spy either by himself or the British state? Why did the Hotel have a trace of the substance and did the cleaner both get sick? How did they trace the hotel?
Do we assume that the other pic is not Salisbury?
Still suffering that Al Jazeera hangup, are we?