A Turkish cosmetics company used the picture of the man believed to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks in an advertisement for a hair removal product.
Al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is shown wearing a white T-shirt looking disheveled and tired, with a very obvious ring of chest and back hair between his shirt collar and neck.
Accompanying Mohammed's image is a slogan in Turkish that reads "Waiting won't get rid of that hair!" according to the Hurriyet Daily News.
The company, the name of which was not mentioned in reports, said it had no idea the hairy man in the image is accused of planning the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.
"We didn't know that he was a terrorist. This image is in popular use in Turkish memes on the Internet," Mehmet Can Yildiz, a representative from the cosmetics company, told the Hurriyet Daily News on Tuesday.
"The guy is quite hairy, so we thought his body was a good fit for our ad," Yildiz added.
The picture was taken after Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. The company came across his image on a Turkish social media site, where it was often posted with humorous captions, mostly about insomnia, the representative said.
"We didn't want to imply anything political. We didn't know that it would become an international story. I repeat: We featured him for his hair, not terrorism," Yildiz told the newspaper.
Mohammed is currently being detained by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay.
This is not the first time Turkish companies have distributed questionable advertisements for their products, The Daily Sabah noted.
A commercial for men's shampoo was quickly banned in 2012 for featuring footage of Adolf Hitler giving a speech while appearing to ask viewers, "Are you man enough to use it?"
