Lawmaker Rejects Apology for Bin Laden Image

(Jan. 19) -- The Spanish politician whose face the FBI used to create a new, digitally aged mugshot of Osama bin Laden has refused to accept the apologies of U.S. officials, saying they are "not enough."

In a news conference Monday, Gaspar Llamazares repeated threats to file suit against the agency and demanded a "thorough investigation" into the incident, saying it caused him concern about the FBI's approach toward fighting terror.

"If this is how security against terrorism is guaranteed, whose hands are we in?" he asked. He also wondered whether the FBI kept a file on leftist, anti-war activist political figures like himself, implying that his likeness had not been arbitrarily selected, as the FBI has maintained.

Last week, an FBI spokesman acknowledged that one of its forensic artists had indeed used a photo of Llamazares found on the Internet to create the speculative image of Bin Laden.

The new composite image was originally posted online Thursday but was taken down days later, once the news leaked and Llamazeras complained. It reportedly features the politician's hair and other features and was created without his knowledge or permission.



As for bin Laden, the al-Qaida founder and 9/11 mastermind has evaded capture for close to a decade now, despite reportedly being within reach of the U.S. military on multiple occasions and having a $25 million bounty on his head.

Although he's the most well known, bin Laden is only one of 42 terror suspects that the State Department is willing to pay a tidy sum to secure, according to their Rewards for Justice Web site.

Yet many of these men have not been clearly photographed in several years, making it difficult for counterterror forces and bounty hunters to identify them. Along with bin Laden, 17 others on the list received the same digital-aging treatment. Generally, suspects turned out grayer, more haggard, and with different haircuts and facial hair.

In a press release accompanying the new mugshots Thursday, the State Department said: "Federal investigators hope these updated images will enable the public to better identify these wanted suspects."

"These new images are powerful examples of how advances in technology and science can be used to help find and bring to justice wanted persons," said Louis E. Grever, executive assistant director for the FBI's Science and Technology Branch.

Indeed, the images are part of a larger wave of anti-terror methods that attempt to rely more on brains than brawn. Other examples include psychological profiling, body language analysis, bomb-sniffing robots for noncombat zones, and of course the much-ballyhooed full-body security scanners that were rolled out in airports after the failed Christmas Day plane bombing.