Photo shock … the FBI said it used ‘‘cutting edge’’ technology to update its composite image of Osama bin Laden, left. But it turned out to be little more than cutting and pasting features of a Spanish politician, Gaspar Llamazares, right.

”It’s almost like out of a comedy…”

SMH | Jan 18, 2010

by FIONA GOVAN

MADRID: The FBI has admitted it used a photograph of a bearded Spanish politician as the basis for a mocked photofit of Osama bin Laden, to show how the terrorist leader might look now.

The US State Department was forced to withdraw the image, which was circulated around the world last week, after the discovery that it was not quite as technically sophisticated as the FBI had claimed.

The image of an older and greying bin Laden was meant to show how he might look without his turban and long beard. It appeared on a State Department website, rewardsforjustice.net, where a reward of up to $US25 million ($26.85 million) is offered for bin Laden, wanted over the September 11, 2001, attacks and the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. The FBI said the photo of bin Laden would be removed from the website.

It created a stir in Madrid when a Spanish MP recognised strong elements of himself in the image and complained to the US.

Gaspar Llamazares, a member of Spain’s Communist Party, said his forehead, hair and jawline had been ”cut and pasted” from an old campaign photograph.

The FBI claimed to have used ”cutting edge” technology to reproduce new images of 18 of the most wanted terrorist suspects. But on Saturday a spokesman for the FBI, Ken Hoffman, admitted that a technician ”was not satisfied” with the hair features offered by the FBI’s software and instead used part of a photo of Mr Llamazares that he found on the internet.

Mr Llamazares said the mistake showed the ”low level” of US intelligence services. It could cause problems for people mistakenly seen to resemble the terrorist. ”Bin Laden’s safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is,” he said.

”I was surprised and angered because it’s the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist,” Mr Llamazares said at a news conference. ”It’s almost like out of a comedy if it didn’t deal with matters as serious as bin Laden and citizens’ security.”

The 52-year-old politician said he would not feel safe travelling in the US now because many airports use biometrics technology that compares the physical characteristics of travellers to passport or other photographs. ”I have no similarity, physically or ideologically, to the terrorist bin Laden,” he said.