[JURIST] A Spanish lawmaker Saturday expressed anger over the use of his image as a basis for an FBI mock-up [Rewardsforjustice.net reward poster] of Osama bin Laden [JURIST news archive], saying he would like a formal explanation and may file a lawsuit. The FBI admitted to using an image [CNN report] of Spanish MP Gaspar Llamazares [official profile, in Spanish], the former leader of the United Left Coalition [party website in Spanish], as the basis for an age-progressed picture of Bin Laden for its Rewards for Justice [official website] program. The FBI explained [AP report] 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 [JURIST news archives] leader. The FBI said there was no ill motive. Llamazares said [Canadian Press report] 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 [Times report] 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 [transcript; JURIST report] from 2006. In the recording, a man claiming to be bin Laden said that convicted September 11 [JURIST news archive] conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui [JURIST news archive] 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 [JURIST news archive] 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.