Altered: Osama Bin Laden digitally aged by the FBI. Technicians used a picture of Gaspar Llamazares (right) to create the image The US government has withdrawn an age-enhanced image of Osama Bin Laden after admitting it was partly based on a photo of a Spanish politician found on Google.
The image of the Al Qaeda leader, as he may look now without the familiar long beard and turban, was put on the webpage of the State Department’s Rewards for Justice programme.
The FBI had said it used ‘cutting edge’ technology to create the picture to track down the world’s most wanted terrorist.
But it has been withdrawn after a technician confessed it was based partly on a picture of Gaspar Llamazares, a Communist deputy in the Spanish Congress.
Llamazares, an ex-leader of Spain’s United Left coalition, has been critical of the US War on Terror and wants Spain’s foreign ministry to ask the US for an explanation.
An FBI spokesman admitted Mr Llamazares’s hair and forehead were used.
He said: ‘Our forensic artists have a wide variety of generic facial features which they can chose from the programme we use to create these simulated images.
'For some reason one particular technician was not satisfied with the hair the programme was offering and, on their own initiative, decided to turn to the images in Google. What he did is totally irregular.’
The spokesman insisted Mr Llamazares’s image was not chosen intentionally.
A spokesman for the United Left said they doubted the photo of Mr Llamazares was used by accident.
He stated: ‘We in the United Left do not believe in coincidences.’
source: dailymail
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