Spanish politician to sue FBI over using his face for a hypothetical modern Bin Laden photo

Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares threatens to prosecute the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for using his photo to produce al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s modern image.

Llamazares, the former leader of Spain’s United Left communist party and the caucus’s current spokesperson in the parliament, has expressed ‘stupefaction’ over the FBI’s misuse of his picture to compose a digitally-enhanced photo of the al-Qaeda leader, warning the agency of legal action unless justification is provided.

“Firstly I will ask the FBI for an explanation, which they haven’t given me yet, and then I will reserve the right to take legal action,” Llamazares told CNN.

“In the last few days I have seen the security services involved in some very strange things, some major failures, but I would never have believed they could have affected me so directly,” he added.

He also said that FBI technicians had “cut and pasted” his forehead, hair and jaw-line from a photo used in a previous campaign to produce the altered image of Bin Laden.

The 52-year-old politician rebuked the FBI for undermining his security with the “low level” of US intelligence services.

“Bin Laden’s safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is,” he noted.

The US State Department was forced to withdraw the doctored image, distributed globally last week, admitting to have used a picture of ‘a bearded Spanish politician’ to reproduce Bin Laden’s photo-image.

The FBI originally claimed to have applied “cutting edge” technology for the mock-up.

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