The theatre continues with some school boy photo shop from the FBI

Climategate followed by the Nigerian crotch bomber followed by....

A photo of Bin Laden from 1998 (left) was apparently digitally altered using elements from an image of Gaspar Llamazares (right)

A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look.

Mr Llamazares, 52, the former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament in Spain

Early Years and career
Second of six brothers and sisters, he spent his childhood and youth in Salinas, Castrillón, Asturias. He studied medicine in the Autonomous University of Madrid and in the University of Oviedo, where he received his degree. There he founded "Bocetos" ("sketches"), a medical publication attempting to focus especially on the social issues of medicine, unlike the biological paradigms then dominating in medicine. He then completed his studies with a Masters in Public Health in the University of Havana, in Cuba. In 1985, back in Spain, he started teaching in the University of Santiago de Compostela and then in the Unidad Docente de Medicina de Familia in Cazoña (Cantabria). More from his wiki entry

Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster.

He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was "shameless".

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo said an FBI spokesman had admitted the agency had taken a picture from Google Images.

The digitally-altered photos of the al-Qaeda leader, showing how he might look now, aged 52, were issued by the US state department on Friday.

Officials said they had adapted a 1998 file image to take account of a decade's worth of ageing, and possible changes to facial hair.

'Low level' intelligence

Mr Llamazares, 52, the former leader of the United Left coalition in parliament, said he could not believe it when he was first told about the similarity between himself and the new photo-fit of Bin Laden.

He said he soon realised that his forehead, hair and jaw-line had been "cut and pasted" from an old campaign photograph. Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is.
"I was surprised and angered because it's the most shameless use of a real person to make up the image of a terrorist," he told 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 FBI claimed to have used "cutting edge" technology, but Mr Llamazares said it showed the "low level" of US intelligence services and could cause problems if he was wrongly identified as the Saudi.

"Bin Laden's safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is," he said, adding that he was considering taking legal action.

El Mundo quoted FBI spokesman Ken Hoffman as saying a technician "was not satisfied" with the hair features offered by the FBI's software programme and instead used part of a photo of Mr Llamazares posted on the internet.

"The technician had no idea whose image he had found and no dark motive for using it," he told the newspaper. The FBI did not respond immediately when asked for comment on Saturday, requesting that questions be sent to it by e-mail.

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