US releases age-enhanced images of Osama

Washington: Long bushy beard with a turban, that's the image you might conjure up in your mind about world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden. But, the new digitalised age-enhanced images of Laden without his beard released by US government gives a very different picture, literally.

Trimmed beard with wavy grey hair, Osama's new look is bound to be deceptive.

The photo released by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shows an age-progression image of the Al-Qaida leader Osama bin-Laden. The image is part of a DoD/FBI initiative to find its Most Wanted Terrorists.

In its hunt to nab most wanted terrorists, the FBI forensic artists modified the 18 terrorist's facial features to show what they might look like today.

In other cases, their features have been modified to show how they might appear with different grooming and clothing choices.

Federal investigators hope these updated images will enable the public to better identify these wanted suspects. It also shows him with more lined features and lacking the long beard which many people associate him with.

There is a $25 million bounty on bin Laden's head for the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.

Bin Laden is now 52. And he is believed to be hiding in the lawless Pakistan frontier bordering Afghanistan, though his exact whereabouts have been unknown since late 2001, when he and a small contingent of body guards walked out of the Tora Bora mountains, evading air strikes and US special forces and Afghan militias.

The photos and bounty on bin Laden is on the State Department's web site rewardsforjustice.net. (With inputs from Agencies)