The Derby Evening Telegraph has been rapped for publishing a photograph of the young son of a failed suicide bomber.

The paper printed an old photograph of the boy with his father, Omar Khan Sharif, who had attempted to become a suicide bomber in Israel, in a supplement about the Derby man.

But it was claimed that after it appeared the boy was pointed out in public as "the bomber's son" and a woman from Derby contacted the Press Complaints Commission.

She said the photograph had been published without consent, in breach of Clause 6 (Children), and that the the child had not been in the public eye before it appeared.

She also supplied a recent photograph of the child which she claimed showed that he looked no different today.

The PCC upheld the complaint.

The newspaper said that it had carefully considered the decision to publish the photograph of Sharif and his son and the whole family was already in the public eye before publication of the article, which followed the conclusion of related legal proceedings.

It said the picture was of poor quality and at least three years old, and that the child was unlikely to have been recognised from it.

It added that Sharif's actions had placed the city at the centre of international attention and there was a legitimate public interest in examining his ostensibly "normal" background.

In order to resolve the complaint, the newspaper offered to write a private letter of apology to the complainant and to give an undertaking not to use the photograph in future.

But the PCC said while Sharif's background was doubtless in the public interest, publication of the child's photograph - for which there was no consent - had embarrassed the boy, who was an innocent seven-year-old.

The image did not appear to be in the public domain and there was no exceptional public interest in publishing his image to a wide audience.

It said: "The subject matter clearly affected the boy's welfare, and, as such, the commission upheld the complaint."

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