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Look familiar?

A few months back I took a photo of a fairly unique license plate I saw near my house, and subsequently posted it here. Nikita later linkpooled it and (for reasons still unknown) it took a lot of traffic. Now, three months down the track, the newspaper has picked it up.

The infamous OSAMA 1 license plate

It turns out the car belongs to a Mr. Osama Farid, local businessman and (given his response to the whole affair) total media recluse. A photo (no, not my photo) graces the front cover of Thursday’s West Australian, and a short piece occupies space on page two’s Inside Cover feature. A sample:

The owner of the car is a perfectly honourable real estate agent known as Sam Farid but Osama is his full name. It’s a name he had long before the other Osama decided to wage a war of indiscriminate terror against America and any of its allies.

IC has discovered that Mr Farid’s first application for OSAMA 1 to the Department of Planning and Infrastructure was opposed.

“He applied for the personalized registration some time in the latter stage of 2001 at a time when Osama bin Laden was certainly an individual of high profile globally,” a spokesman said. “We initially declined the application for number plate OSAMA 1 on the basis of having concerns that the vehicle’s plates might become a target for vandalism or other criminal activity”

“The applicant appealed that rejection and we subsequently did permit the number plate to be issued on the basis that it is indeed the gentleman’s name.”

Must’ve been a slow news day.