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Spain lawmaker considering legal action over lifted US Bin Laden image

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] A Spanish lawmaker Saturday expressed anger over the use of his image as a basis for an FBI mock-up of Osama bin Laden, saying he would like a formal explanation and may file a lawsuit. The FBI admitted to using an image of Spanish MP Gaspar Llamazares, the former leader of the United Left Coalition, as the basis for an age-progressed picture of Bin Laden for its Rewards for Justice program. The FBI explained that a forensic analyst working on the updated picture resorted to using Llamazares' image after he could not find suitable features in the file photographs of the al Qaeda leader. The FBI said there was no ill motive. Llamazares said he was disappointed at the intelligence agency's actions and that he now feared traveling to the United States. Osama bin Laden is currently believed to be hiding out in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The most recent contact with Bin Laden is believed to be a audio tape from 2006. In the recording, a man claiming to be bin Laden said that convicted September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was not intended to be one of September 11 hijackers as he had not finished his flying training, and that "his confession that he was assigned to participate in those raids is a false confession which no intelligent person doubts is a result of the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years." The man on the tape also indicated those held in Guantanamo Bay did not play any role in the September 11 attacks either. Bin Laden's whereabouts were last confirmed in 2001 when he avoided airstrikes while hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on January 17, 2010 (boomark / email).