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LONDON – In March, when British detectives opened an investigation into the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian spy, they did not have much work to do but some video surveillance footage. The leaders leaned on their desktops, they began the unscrupulous job of exploring them, looking for a murderer.
Britain is one of the most watched nations on the planet, with one surveillance camera per 11 inhabitants. It has advanced technology to visually identify criminals and software so sensitive that they can scan an airport for a tattoo or a pink ring. And then there is this team of genetically gifted humans known as "super-grateful".
On Wednesday, the authorities announced that the effort had borne fruit: two Russian intelligence agents had been accused of attempted murder, the first criminal charges in a case that had dug a rift between Russia and Russia. # 39; West.
Investigators released a cache of evidence, including images of security cameras capturing the two men's progress on an Aeroflot flight at the crime scene, and from there to Moscow. They also published photographs of the delicate bottle of perfume used to carry a nerve agent, known as Novichok, in the peaceful English town of Salisbury where the attack took place.
In the days leading up to the poisoning of March 4, the same two Russian men continued to appear on the cameras.
"It's almost impossible in this country to hide, almost impossible," said John Bayliss, who retired from the headquarters of Government Communications, the British intelligence agency, in 2010. "And with the new software What they have, how they walk, or a ring that they wear or a watch that they wear in. This becomes even more difficult.
The Skripal poisoning survey, known as Operation Wedana, will be a highly publicized test of an investigative technique that Britain has developed: accumulating tons of visual data and examining them.
Neil Basu, a top British anti-terrorist police official, broke months of silence at a hasty news conference in Scotland on Wednesday, making the unusual decision to strip journalists of their electronic devices Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov had been issued. Two hours later, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the British intelligence services had identified the men as officers of the Russian military intelligence service.
Russian officials reacted enthusiastically by stating in a statement from the Foreign Ministry that "we decisively reject these insinuations".
"It is impossible to ignore the fact that British and American colleagues act in the same way: without worrying about producing evidence, they announce a list of some" Russian agents "to justify the witch hunt in London and Washington, "said Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Bayliss said that from the beginning, the investigators were fully aware that the suspects would be protected in Russia and had never been tried, although Interpol red notices and national and European arrest warrants were issued. .
"There are many people who give up, because what is the purpose?" He said. "They are in Russia, we will not get them back. But the fact is that once you have reached this point, it means that these people can not leave Russia. "
Beyond that, Mr. Bayliss said: "We are satisfied to get the truth, to be able to prove to the Western world that the Russians have done this".
On the day of the attack, Mr. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found barely aware on a bench next to the Avon River. (They both recovered, but months later, two Britons, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, became ill after being exposed to poison, and Mrs. Sturgess died.)
In the days following the Skripal attack, investigators began collecting 11,000 hours of video from ports, train stations, shop windows, car dashboards and roads around Mr. Skripal's home. .
Before looking for a needle, the investigators said with irony that they had to build their own haystack first.
The survey focused on some of Scotland Yard's most famous sites. assets, such as its super-reconnaissance unit. His officers are selected for their superior ability to remember faces – the opposite of prosopagnosia, also called "facial blindness".
"They do not focus on the obvious: graying hair or mustache or glasses," unit founder Mick Neville told Sky News last week. "They look at the eyes, the mouth, the ears – things that do not change. They can recognize a face of the smallest preview of a party.
In cases such as the Skripal investigation, which begins with a huge pool of potential suspects, super-identifiers can help by identifying people who seem to be suspicious, experts say. Local police often have to help them eliminate passers-by, such as drug traffickers, who may also appear suspicious.
These results were then covered with passport data for Russians who left the country shortly after the poisoning, reducing the number of suspects to a reasonable number. The police were able to cross the suspects in other ways, for example by mapping the use of the cell phone and the bank card.
"It's a bit like a funnel, the top of the funnel contains a large amount, and as the liquid comes out the bottom, it's reduced to a small stream," Bayliss said.
The investigators were lucky: heavy snowfall fell during the weekend of the attack, reducing the number of people on the streets.
A major breakthrough occurred nearly two months after the Skripals were poisoned when the police arrived at the City Stay hotel in East London, where the two suspects had spent the two nights before the attack. The officers took samples from the room where the two men had stayed and sent them for laboratory tests. Two of them showed traces of contamination for the nerve agent used during the attack.
On Wednesday, as news of the charges spread, the neighbors glanced curiously at the building, which had spotted windows and dirty artificial turf.
"I just got a thrill, a thrill," said Debbie Weekes, 47, who lives nearby. "It's shocking, I'm running out of words. You never know who is around you.
Some wondered why they had not received any warning in May, when police found traces of nerve agents in the hotel.
"Of course, we do not feel safe," said 43-year-old Shehan Ravindranath, head of a supermarket across the street. "We can only take protection if we are informed."
At Salisbury, the announcement of the charges was greeted with relief. Matthew Dean, director of Salisbury City Council and owner of a local pub, the Duke of York, said he hoped it would put an end to the conspiracy theories about crime.
"It's a closing piece," he said.
Ceri Hurford-Jones, general manager of Salisbury's local radio station, praised the investigators for their "ability to master this issue and find out who these people are".
This may not have been the case for action films, but Mr. Hurford-Jones has seen something impressive about all of this.
"It's methodical, it works," he said. "But you know, it's the only way to do these things. There is a little bit of England in that. "
Iliana Magra and Richard Perez-Pena reported in London and Oleg Matsnev from Moscow.
