One of Prince Andrew’s key lines of defense to allegations that he participated in the abuse of one of Jeffrey Epstein’s underaged “sex slaves” is that someone must have faked the widely shared image of him with the girl.

In his BBC interview, Andrew suggested that the photo — showing him with his arm around Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s waist while standing in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London townhouse in 2001 — was the result of digital trickery.

Andrew said, “I have absolutely no memory of that photograph… I’m afraid to say that I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested.”

But UC Berkeley Professor Hany Farid, one of the foremost international experts in image manipulation, said he sees no “obvious signs” the photo was doctored.

“I can’t say for sure that the image is authentic, but I don’t see any obvious signs of manipulation,” Farid said in an email to this news organization.

Farid is a professor of digital forensics and image analysis in UC Berkeley’s School of Information. He initially studied the image at the request of The Times in London and shared his analysis with this news organization.

Overall, Farid said, the light and shadows in the image show no inconsistencies and it doesn’t appear likely that Andrew’s body or head were spliced into the image.

“It can be difficult to get the body poses just right when splicing two people together,” Farid said. “The fact that the two figures are so seamlessly and closely placed next to each other suggests that this is unlikely to be a full-body splice of Prince Andrew.”

“The lighting and pose of the head seem consistent with the body and scene suggesting that it is also unlikely that this is Prince Andrew’s head spliced onto another person’s body,” Farid said.

The Duke of York’s friends had offered up the “chubby” fingers argument for why he could not have posed for the photo. The friends told U.K. media outlets that the royal’s fingers in real life are much “chubbier” than those seen in the photo.

Whether or not the 59-year-old Andrew has “chubby” fingers, Farid described how he compared the color and resolution of the duke’s right hand in the photo and the fingers of his left hand, which are clutching Giuffre’s bare waist.

“The color and resolution of the hand on the waist is consistent with the other hand, and the contact with the waist and body poses is consistent, suggesting that this is not spliced in,” Farid said.

For Giuffre, the image helps corroborate her claims that she met Andrew in March 2001 when she was 17. Giuffre also said she had sex with the queen’s second son, both that night and two more times at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and on his private island in the Caribbean.

At the time, Andrew was in his early 40s and known to travel with the multimillionaire American financier and stay at his homes. Epstein was subsequently investigated for sex trafficking and pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation of a minor. His arrest in July on new sex trafficking charges and reported Aug. 10 suicide in a Manhattan jail focused media attention on his friendships with rich and powerful men, including with Andrew.

The Sacramento-born Giuffre, now 36 and living in Australia, has alleged in court filings and in interviews that Maxwell, Andrew’s longtime socialite friend and Epstein’s former girlfriend and “alleged madam,” introduced her to Andrew and directed her to have sex with him.

In an interview with Savannah Guthrie for NBC’s “Dateline,” Giuffre said: “Ghislaine woke me up in the morning and told me ‘You’re going to meet a prince today.'”

“I didn’t know at that point that I was going to be trafficked to that prince,” Giuffre said. “I couldn’t believe that even royalty were involved.”

Giuffre also told the Daily Mail in 2011 that Epstein snapped the photo after she, Maxwell and Epstein returned from dancing at a London nightclub.

“All of us went upstairs and I asked Jeffrey to snap a picture of me with the Prince. I wanted something to show my mom,” she said.

Andrew has repeatedly and vehemently ever denied having sex with Giuffre, including in the BBC interview. He told the BBC, “I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.”

The eighth in line to the British throne said he couldn’t have met Giuffre in London on the night she described because, that same night, he had taken his oldest daughter, Princess Beatrice, to a Pizza Express in a London suburb. He was then home with both his daughters while his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson was away.

As for posing for the photo, Andrew told BBC interviewer Emily Maitlis he doesn’t remember ever going upstairs in Maxwell’s townhouse. He also suggested that the photo couldn’t be genuine because he has never been in the habit of engaging in public displays of affection with women or of wearing anything but a suit and tie when he goes out at night in London.

However, since Andrew made these claims, the Daily Mail and other tabloids have published a number of photos that show Andrew in the 2000s, wearing casual clothes and partying and hugging women at venues in London and in the South of France.

Farid acknowledged that it’s difficult to perform a detailed analysis of the photo of Andrew and Giuffre because of its fairly low quality. But from the image that’s available, he said it was clearly taken with a flash because the flash is invisible in the window behind them and “there is the red eye.”

“You can also see the strong cast shadow for the two people on the right onto the wall behind them,” Farid said.

Prior to Farid offering his assessment, the Daily Mail published an account about how it first obtained the photo for its 2011 interview with Giuffre. At the time, Giuffre was not interested in publicity and living a quiet life in Australia. A Daily Mail correspondent, looking into reports that the FBI was reopening its investigation of Epstein’s trafficking of underaged girls, found Giuffre and convinced her to tell her story.

While serving coffee to the Daily Mail correspondent and freelance photographer Michael Thomas, Giuffre produced an envelope containing a collection of photos from her travels with Epstein, according to Thomas and the Daily Mail. Thomas found the image of her with Andrew in the envelope and photographed it to publish in the Daily Mail.

“The original was a 7×5 snap mixed up with some others taken during her time with Epstein,” Thomas, who now lives in New Zealand, told the Times.

“There is no way it was faked — it was a snap, mixed up with pictures of her travels round the world with Epstein,” Thomas continued. “We were looking for pictures of her with Bill Clinton or other big names, not a second-rate prince.”

“In most of them she looked like a teenager on holiday with her dad,” Thomas added.