By IANS/EFE,
Madrid : A Spanish politician has threatened to sue the FBI for using his face in a digitally morphed picture of dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden posted on the website of US intelligence department.
Gaspar Llamazares, spokesman for the United Left coalition, said it shows “the low level” of US intelligence services and he would demand that they explain what the photo of a political leader was doing in the files of the FBI and why it was used to compose the image of a terrorist.
The FBI distributed Friday some “digitally enhanced” photos of the Al Qaeda leader in which he appears older and with a shorter beard, in one of which the upper part of Llamazares’ face was used, Spanish daily El Mundo reported.
What happened would be “funny” if it weren’t for the fact that it “affects the safety and freedom of citizens and people who have not committed a crime of any kind”, Llamazares said in a statement Saturday.
Describing the matter as “very serious”, Llamazares said that he does not rule out taking legal action against the US authorities.
Sources close to Llamazares told Efe that Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and his interior and foreign ministers – Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba and Miguel Angel Moratinos, respectively – have also expressed their solidarity with him on the issue.
The FBI acknowledged Saturday the use of Llamazares’ image for the poster of the world’s most wanted terrorist and said it will withdraw the picture from its website.
“We’re aware of the similarities in the characteristics of the hairline in the photo of an older Osama bin Laden, produced by the FBI and published on the web, and that of an existing photograph of a Spanish public official,” FBI spokesman Jason Pack said.
The FBI updated this week 18 photos of suspected terrorists on its website and offered bounty for their capture. The US government is offering a maximum of $25 million for Osama bin Laden.
Pack said that to produce photos showing a subject’s advancing years, the forensic artists select the characteristics from a database of photographs they use as a reference to create the new image.
Nonetheless, after a preliminary examination, “apparently in this case the forensic artist could not find the right characteristics among the reference photos and instead obtained these characteristics, in part, from a photo he found on the internet”.
The FBI spokesman said that the forensic artist “was not aware” of the identity of the person in the photograph that he used and the similarities between the photos “were not intentional”.
In the picture, created in the FBI lab, the Saudi terrorist appears somewhat heavier, with grey hair and a short beard.