Spanish Lawmaker Pissed At US For Using His Image In Osama Touch Up

As I wrote previously, the US has updated photos to a number of top terrorists using age progressing software to show how they may have aged and/or altered their appearance. Well, it turns out that the images used to give Osama bin Laden was based on an image that the FBI experts took from Google Images and which happened to be a Spanish lawmaker.

That image on the far right above turns out to be an image based on the likeness of Gaspar Llamazares.

Gaspar Llamazares of the United Left party said he would no longer feel safe traveling to the United States after his hair and facial wrinkles appeared on a wanted poster updating the U.S. government's 1998 photo of the al-Qaeda leader.

"I was surprised and angered because it's the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist," Llamazares said at a news conference Saturday.

"It's almost like out of a comedy if it didn't deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens' security."

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo quoted FBI spokesman Ken Hoffman as acknowledging that the agency used a picture of Llamazares taken from Google Images for the digitally altered image of bin Laden.

The photo appeared on a U.S. State Department Web site rewardsforjustice.net, where a reward of up to $25 million is offered for bin Laden, wanted in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.