Gotcha! The Most Memorable Manhunt Photos Ever

Osama bin Laden is dead. Can we get an undoctored Twit pic please?

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Now that President Barack Obama has declared to the world that U.S. military forces have killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, everyone wants to see a dead body. The photo above, on the right, was online shortly after the news broke but, as you can see from a skeptic's side-by-side of several photos, it appears that this was photo manipulation.

After a manhunt, a good photo is always needed to mark the capture and/or killing of the subject. While we're sure that somebody has a camera phone pic or something of the body in "custody," we're still waiting. Perhaps in time we will have a photo that resembles one of these memorable manhunt photos.

ERNESTO "CHE" GUEVARA, 1967

Following the iconic Marxist revolutionary's capture on October 8, when 1,800 Bolivian Special Forces soldiers surrounded his encampment and wounded him, Bolivian President René Barrientos ordered Che's execution. Shot nine times and killed on October 9, he was then put on display in a Vallegrande laundry room the following day, where military personnel posed with his corpse.

Obviously the laundry room was meant to symbolize that Che's face and message would one day be bastardized by Capitalists to sell T-shirts to "rebellious" teens. Dirty.


PABLO ESCOBAR, 1993

On December 2, a Colombian police surveillance team located the drug kingpin by triangulating his radio signal. A shootout and rooftop chase led to police gunning Escobar down. Afterwards, officers posed with the body of the man who had killed policemen, politicians, and judges, and cheesed like a bunch of dudes at a bachelor party, where, ironically, use of Mr. Escobar's product is generally considered acceptable.


UDAY AND QUSAY HUSSEIN, 2003

On July 22, after the distant relative, whose Mosul house they were hiding out in, ratted them out, Saddam Hussein's sons engaged in a four-hour shootout with U.S. forces. Ultimately, they didn't stand much chance, as it was four (Qusay's 14-year-old son and a bodyguard were also present) against over 200 American soldiers, helicopters, and a jet. Apparently the house was fresh out of white flags.


SADDAM HUSSEIN, 2003

On December 13, U.S. forces captured the fleeing dictator as he hid in a hole at a farm in ad-Dawr near Tikrit. American soldiers snapped the above photo, in which Saddam looks like Iraqi Jerry Garcia, to commemorate the moment. Later, his wild-ass beard was shaved to prove that it was him and not, you know, Iraqi Jerry Garcia.

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