A Turkish hair removal company has hit the headlines after featuring an unusual model in its latest promotion.
An advert for Epila hair removal products featured a photograph of a hairy man in a slash necked white t shirt with the caption “Waiting won’t get rid of that hair”.
But the person in question turned out to be former Al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon in America.
The company were contacted by Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News regarding the use of Mohammed, who is currently incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.
The Daily Mail reports that Mehmet Can Yildiz, a spokesman for Epila, told the journalist, “We didn’t know that he was a terrorist. This image is in popular use in Turkish memes on the internet.”
They confirmed that they used the extremist’s picture for “his hair, not terrorism”.
The company said the decision to use the photo was based on several popular captioned pictured of Mohammed which had been circulated electronically in Turkey. “Most were related to insomnia” the spokesman said, and confirmed they did not want to “imply anything political”.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is being held in the infamous Cuban prison where there are reports he has been subjected to 183 simulated drownings, commonly known as “water boarding”. He has confessed to a career of atrocities and if he is found guilty of the crimes of masterminding the terrorist atrocities he could face the death sentence.
Last year it emerged that, while confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Mohammed, who had earned his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, asked his jailers whether he could design a vacuum cleaner.
The agency officer in charge of the prison called CIA headquarters and a manager approved the request, a former senior CIA official told The Associated Press.
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