Usama Bin Laden Had a Facebook Page

In this April 1998 file photo, exiled Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden is seen in Afghanistan. (AP)

The al Qaeda leader, or someone posing as him, was using the social-networking site as a platform to show videos and speeches to Islamic militants -- until Facebook shut him down, that is.

His address was given as "the mountains of the world."

On Thursday, a security expert urged Facebook's U.S. owners to shut down the profile page, named "The leader of the Mujahideen, Osama bin Laden." The profile became active on March 25 and had already attracted nearly 1,000 extremists. Access was via the Taliban's own Facebook presence, according to U.K. publication The Sun.

Although the language used is Arabic, messages in English were beginning to appear, the Sun reported.

"Bin Laden, via his supporters, is clearly taunting his pursuers," Internet terror expert and author Neil Doyle said.

Doyle notes on his blog that the site contained numerous images, dozens of video clips of bin Laden and scenes from films issued by terrorist groups worldwide. One showed a group of al-Qaeda fighters undergoing training in Afghanistan, which was produced by the terror network's official media arm As-Sahab Media.

Another showed a clip of bin Laden lecturing his followers in Afghanistan just before the 9/11 attacks.

Facebook does not have an explicit anti-terrorism policy, although the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities notes that "you will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law."

The statement also demands that "you will not post content that is hateful, threatening" or in other ways inappropriate.

"People often attempt to register fake accounts under the name of famous or infamous people, and we have a number of technical measures designed to prevent this behavior," explained Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes.

"Sometimes these fakes do get through but there is no evidence to suggest that the account in question or the other dozens of people who have tried to present themselves as Osama Bin Laden have any relation to the terrorist. As is our standard practice, we have disabled the account."