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
I’m guessing the camera could be a simple PTZ (pan tilt zoom) device that detects motion then starts recording or taking stills while remaining focused on the moving subject. This would explain the different angles of view.
The barriers do appear to be at different angles but maybe these too could be triggered by motion and close if no motion is detected in the corridor.
The fact that there is ‘pause’ on the image strongly suggest that this is a frame grabbed from a compressed video stream. This will have some artefacts of compression, but I would still argue that they are fit for purpose. It would be possible to install higher quality cameras and processing and recording systems, but considering the vast number needed at an airport this would significantly increase both the installation and ongoing storage and management costs.
Craig, they say it’s “Boshirov”, not “Borishov”.
To me, the names look like they were selected to send a message: Petrov refers to Putin (there’s a character in the famous American remake of House of Cards named President Petrov who is basically a caricature of Putin) and Boshirov refers to Bashar al-Assad. This can be interpreted as “Putin and Assad are murderers”. Another interpretation could be a message to the Kremlin: “this is what you get for messing with our plans in Syria”.
Yes, the names are like Smith & Jones.
Surely if the security services know these men to be GRU officers, then I would have thought they would also know their real names? Hard to know details of their employment without knowing their names I would have thought. The Russian Government’s response that they have never heard of them is understandable if all they’ve been given are their false names.
Russia to hit back with super strength nerve agent. ?
https://mobile.twitter.com/philip_guitarra/status/1037326684234678272/photo/1
I have just checked on the Met website and you are right, how can someone occupy the same space at the same time as someone else? Some of the other images look less than convincing that they are the suspects but I am no expert. I copy the link here in case anyone wants to see for themselves.
http://news.met.police.uk/news/counter-terrorism-police-release-images-of-two-suspects-in-connection-with-salisbury-attack-320534
Westminster knows Russia won’t extradite these two anyway so Westminster can publish any old rubbish. It’s an attempt to divert the public’s attention.
Dan Huil
Do you mean ” exorcise ” ? If they are ghosts, stuck in a time-warp, I suppose these spooky images could over-ride the CCTV logged time. There again that might explain why the ghostly novichok left its victims alive, but apparently zombified. That decomposing mummy in the House of Commons. Difficult to identify between the unravelling swaddling bands. Sounded like Mrs May, but maybe the undead, with audio link from a cell under No 10, using jump leads onto Boris Johnson’s trepanned brains conveniently placed in a goldfish bowl near the microphone in order to sync and boost her powers of lying.
I can’t explain the dates on the images, and it is curious – but is this supposed to be evidence of a government conspiracy? After what has happened? If they were faked, they would surely put a different time on?
Where is the evidence that the government is capable of such a complicated conspiracy? Have they ever done that?
It’s different tunnels.
Were these doctored the timestamp would be a rookie mistake.
They arrived on same flight, per U.K. authorities.
“At 3pm on Friday, 2 March, the suspects arrived at Gatwick airport, having flown from Moscow on Aeroflot flight SU2588.”
Same flight, same tunnel. But here’s another thought. Where are the other passengers disembarking? In both photos, for some way behind the two suspects, no other passengers are seen disembarking through the tunnel. But in my experience, the tunnels are full of people jostling and hurrying to leave the plane. Perhaps these guys just waited to leave. Maybe. The whole thing, including the photos of burly guys out of central casting, smells fishy.
Today, Chris Leslie accused anyone questioning now of being a ‘conspiracy theorist or a crank’. Can’t stand Chris Leslie, but obsessing over this kind of thing, plays into the hands of those wanting to disparage anyone questioning anything.
Chris Leslie has fast vanished from being the ‘great white hope’of the Blairites
( the other one is um um ahh i forget, you know who i mean?) just like Owen and Angela etc.
“Where is the evidence that the government is capable of such a complicated conspiracy? Have they ever done that?”
Many times. Take, for example, the famous fake “Zinoviev letter”, created in 1924 by SIS, FCO, and conservative politicians. The “letter” was published by Daily Mail just four days before the elections and had a significant damaging effect on British-Soviet relations. For decades the conservatives insisted that the “letter” was real, until it was proven to be fake beyond any reasonable doubt in the late 1990s by Gill Bennett (Chief Historian of the FCO from 1995 to 2005). Read the full story in her recent book “The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy that Never Dies” (2018).
Your citing an incident that happened nearly 100 years ago to prove your point? So nothing more convincing in nearly a century?
Why are there still ‘Official Secrets’ from a hundred years ago?
I’m not “proving” any “point”. Tom’s question was: “Have they ever done that?”. I have provided an example of them doing exactly that. Going to great lengths forging a Russia-smearing fake and posting it all over the MSM of the day to influence public opinion, domestic politics, and the direction of foreign policy.
Mr Murray I have sent you a picture on Twitter my Twitter handle is salty preem @preemsalty I hope this is of some help it seems to me they flipped one of the images
The guy has a parting on the left.
the camera angles are different, the same spot could be explained by motion activated cameras but the same second, even if taken in different hallways, is really suspect.
I think this should go viral as memes where they are shown in different locations ( on holiday etc) but with eh date stamp of the same second
Check out the oblong gates in each picture. They look different or opened more. It’s not the same time in the same room.
I just matched the two photos in Photoshop, rotating and scaling where appropriate to match the features, and the tunnels are identical, not similar but identical, with the only difference being those rotating barrier things to the sides of their arms. So these are not parallel tunnels but the same one, whatever that may mean.
It looks to me like the very last gate in arrivals, after baggage claim. Theres doors behind that shut before the doors ahead open, to stop people going back into the airport.
Now you know why the “D” notice comes in handy.
Beam me up Scottie!
How nonsensical can this become? I refuse to comment anymore, this defies event the Marx Brothers and the Keystone Cops in vaudeville implausibility!
Typical Tory Bullshit ?
Would be interesting to peform some forensic processing on the images to see if it reveals any tell-tale artifacts.
Needless to say, the Guardian has published cropped versions of these photos with the timestamps chopped-out.
On the other hand, there is another story on the Guardian today tryinbg to link Corbyn with Salisbury, so this obvious apparent blunder might simply be a trap being sprung for him and his supporters, given the Guardian’s recent previous form tn this area.
Salisbury council chief criticises Corbyn for ‘private’ visit to city
Boris Johnson accuses Jeremy Corbyn of ‘weaselly’ response to naming of the Russian Salisbury attackers
I’m no expert with such tools but I couldn’t find anything that looked suspicious. They appear to be two different, but identically built tunnels. In fact, the tools I used seemed to highlight that the colouring of the carpet in one of the tunnels is a slightly different hue (or at least is being lit slightly differently), it was also possible to reveal what looked liked footprints on the carpet but they were in slighhtly different places in each image. I’m imagining some people who have slightly soiled feet have left marks on the carpet over time.
They are of course taken at different angles and there is a smudge on the wall under the eight in one of the tunnels that is not there in the other.
So as excited as I got when I first saw this, it would appear to me that we’re talking two different corridors. The MET are playing back video footage, so they hit PAUSE both times where they got a clear image. That is up to one second of walking apart, so they needn’t have been in the *exact* same place at the same time.
A fourth logical possibility is that the “time stamp” has been added afterwards – easily done. Although of course if one admits that possibility, how do we know who the men shown might be, or where and when the pictures were taken?
The only conclusion that we can safely arrive at is that the police are lying.
“A fourth logical possibility is that the “time stamp” has been added afterwards – easily done. Although of course if one admits that possibility, how do we know who the men shown might be, or where and when the pictures were taken?”
That’s exactly what I thought. I’ve often added my name and copyright notice on my photos with Photoshop.
As you say, it’s easy to add text or digits like those on the photos after the event. However, it does mean someone with the brains of a gnat printed exactly the same time on both photos – as pointed out by Craig.
I’m trying to be devil’s advocate here for the government line and trying to avoid being a conspiracy theorist but I really find it impossible to find a plausible explanation other than this is a complete fraud.
Brilliant work by Craig!
I did some forensics on the image and I couldn’t find examples of tampering. The only places you could see modifications were the ones that were supposed to be their like the “MET Police” overlay and the story text.
Isn’t this what Higgins at Bellingcat does? At any rate you are not going to be able to “solve” this case by looking for anomalies and inconsistencies on a few photos. Before the internet turned everybody into Sherlock Holmes feverishly looking for evidence to confirm their chosen narrative it was perfectly okay to say “I don’t know who did it” and go on with your life.
Remaining sceptical is one thing, but trying to bolster a version of events you want to believe is something completely different. Many here probably still believe Assad is an elected democrat who is loved by “his” people and other nonsense that is 100% not bloody true. It is really not a good omen for the future that so many people refuse to accept demonstrable truths simply because they are emotionally invested in a particular version of events.
Baalbek
Assad is neither a democrat nor loved in Syria. That’s not the point. Syria rejected Al Qaida and Daesh, which are run by USUKIS because their brutality was worse than Assad’s. After Al Qaida and Daesh have both been liquidated the original task of deposing Assad still needs doing, but through a political alliance between the tyrants of USUKIS and the tyrants of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the only choice offered by the West.
but not through….
Ok so they are syncron swimmers ?
Please tell me to go away, I can actually feel my brain draining, and I will become an American or even a Hippopotamus…
My intellect is fading…..
More interesting to me is that neither of these mens passports have been shown, only their photographs, and no biometrics from the passports either or the visas, it’s like the Police are deliberately hiding evidence.
Fair point.
The mug shots shown in the media look like they were taken just before starting a ” Ten stretch at Parkhurst. ” as Arthur Daley used to say.
As for the two airport photos would the security boys and girls have that many corridors instead of just one. Sort of narrowing
down the rat run so to speak?
As one Irish wag said at the airport to a customs officer – ” Have you anything to declare sir? ”
” Only my Guiness ” he retorted.
If you were thinking of a container to transport poison around the world in…. would you look at these 2 guys and think ‘a Nini Ricci ladies perfume bottle would arose least suspicion’
Excellent observation
Thats funny. At customs……”hmmm, so what do we have here then? like a bit of ladies pefume do we, Mr Novichov?”……..”it’s a present for my girlfriend”……..”girlfriend sir?”……”yes I am going to meet her in salisbury” ………”Does the lovely lady have a name?……….”yes, she’s called yulia Skrpial”.
Honestly, Mayhem and the Mongs must think we all zip up the back! Who in their right mind would believe this shite!!
The sooner this government is brought down the better for us all…..
The identical timestamp is a simple error which happens regularly with cctv systems, certainly the systems I worked with for 15yrs at both local police stations and council offices across Ayrshire. An electrical storm can cause the system to require a manual reset of the time and you’d probably not be surprised to hear that these sort of systems are not kept maintained as they should be.
Honestly, Mayhem and the Mongs must think we all zip up the back! Who in their right mind would believe this shite!!
The sooner this government is brought down the better for us all….
Drue Bremner
Look I found this zip up my back and I didn’t like to go to my doctor because they seem part of the establishment. What should I do? Keep quiet and allow my braincells to be taken over by the BBC/ IHRA/New Labour? Or quietly speak my truth while my Blairite colleagues play Zippy for children’s hour? [email protected]
I think it’s in the tunnel from the aircraft into the hub?
It does raise the question as to why Russia would want to kill Sergei (and JULIA!) at all? They could have done it years ago when he was in prison. But even stranger is that they seem to have set about to make certain it was linked to Russia, not least by apparently using a nerve agent that is unique to Russia. Now we have two Russians on Russian passports arriving the day before Julia; if they were intent on murder then Julia was clearly a target too. But we’re they sent to recce the scene and maybe monitor it when Julia spoke to her Dad about his request to Putin to return to Russia to see his mother before she died? Julia’s connection to a senior Intelligence Agent p, her boyfriend’s mother, may be significant. On balance it seems more likely they were there to monitor the scene and protect Julia. Were the conditions so onerous that Sergei lost his temper over lunch? Or was It MI6’s refusal to let him go that angered him?
More likely it’s a squirrel to further distract us from the continuing Government fuck ups – brought out and re-heated just as the latest other manufactured previous distraction burnt itself out yesterday.
«apparently using a nerve agent that is unique to Russia.»
It is far from unique to Russia: it has been studied in other countries too, of course. Also the OPCW very cleverly said that “the toxic chemical compound displays the same toxic properties of a nerve agent” in the press release; also note that a lot of stuff is “a nerve agent”.
«two Russians on Russian passports»
That is truly bizarre: if the passports were fake, why would the russian government fake russian passports? They are surely able to fake the passports of a couple dozen countries, including biometrics. Also russian visitors were not exactly welcomed before the Salisbury story. Sounds quite stupid. Also if the government thinks that the passports were fake, how do they know that the two men were GRU agents?
There is also the small detail that visits from Russia usually require a visa with extensive documentation. What happened to that?
The Russian government has asked the UK for information to help identify the alleged culprits – fingerprints, passport numbers, middle names (patronymic), perosnal data etc that would be collected as part of the visa process. The UK government – surprise, surprise – has declined to provide any information.
https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/ru-en.en/rusvesna.su/news/1536171275
There are CCTV shots of the two arriving in Salisbury and walking across a bridge somewhere in town. The timestamps are a little confusing but it appears they arrived or walked across the bridge at 11:48:20 GMT on 4 March and were back at the station at 13:50:56 GMT on 4 March. There is very little time to ‘case the joint’ and they travel by foot. Could they get all around Salisbury on foot dropping off Novichok here, there and everywhere in a couple of hours? All this CCTV footage of them moving around Salisbury but none of the actual attack at the bench – what an amazingly unfortunate coincidence.
https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/ru-en.en/rusvesna.su/news/1536142930
Interestingly, the clean shaven suspect (thin face) doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to the mugshot (rounded face).
The only conclusion that we can safely arrive at is that the police are lying.
It is possible the police are lying, yes. But do you seriously think that some inconsistencies on a couple of photographs makes that an iron clad fact? A reasonable person would say there is not enough evidence available to draw any kind of definitive conclusion.
This is literally delusional behaviour.
pardon the italics
I believe that they have effectively ‘told us’ that they are doctoring images, tacitly admitting that the whole story is fraudulent.
I think this is how these people think. A ‘revelation of the method’. Are they that stupid?
It’s as if they implicitly ask, ‘We are lying, what are you going to do about it?’.
I wonder if by dint of our powerlessness, such revelations serve only to further empower the revealers.
It doesn’t really matter what you believe though, does it? You think can read minds and have supernatural abilities to ascertain motives by looking at photos on the internet? That is not rational or reasonable behaviour…it’s barking mad.
It doesn’t really matter what you believe though, does it?
– you write, thereby showing that it clearly does matter to you.
The observations about the photos are relevant and interesting. The point is, however, that we will probably never know who these people are and whether they are, in fact, linked to the Skripal events or not. That is the absolutely terrible thing about affairs like this obviously used by the UK Gov for obvious purposes.
My guess is this new development is linked to Syria and I think we should all be very worried.
By the way, I didn’t see any evidence that these two, whoever they are, are the culprits. Did I miss something?
Do you recall at the start of all this that a false flag chem attack was planned in Syria to give justification for a full on attack?
That plan fell through other than Trump tossing a few missiles in Syria’s direction. But now a new FF chem attack is planned and the WH have once again rounded up quite a number of children. This dual Russian agents lie is more of the same; just staging to support the action plan of evil Russia, evil Assad, we must bomb them.
They have the same problems they had last time which was the WH may not pull it off properly and Russia has already called them on it. And this time has new variables, Russia has increased its navel presence considerably and Turkey is in play. May and Co may have to settle for stealing all possible Russian assets in the UK along with pledging the UK to buy nothing but high priced US NG.
What annoys me about this whole thing is that when it happened in March, Theresa May said it was th Russians
– she got the Europeans and the Americans to sanction Russia
Which they all did expelling diplomats etc : not going to World Cup
Now she says she’s they have proof now in September and she wants more sanctions for what she said there did in March.
So are Russia going to be punished twice ?
Might they not just say it was a clock malfunction – that the clock stopped for a while at that time. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but could they not just try to explain it in that way?