Madrid case leads to lawyer in Oregon

The Oregonian ^ | May 7, 2004 | Noelle Crombie and Mark Larrabee

[aposiopetic]

Federal agents on Thursday detained a Washington County lawyer in connection with the deadly March 11 terrorist attack in Madrid -- the first American connection to the worst terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.

Brandon Mayfield, 37, who lives in Aloha and played a minor legal role in the Portland Seven terrorism case, was picked up at his West Slope law office on a material witness hold Thursday morning, said Tom Nelson, Mayfield's attorney.

< snip >

[aposiopetic]

Their youngest was born on the Bitburg air base in western Germany, where Brandon Mayfield was stationed in the air defense unit. His only trip to the Middle East, said his wife, was in 1993, when the couple and their three children took a 30-day leave to travel to Mounsura, Egypt.

Her husband was honorably discharged in 1994, after a shoulder injury, she said. The couple returned and Mayfield finished his undergraduate degree at Portland State University

Any connection between the trip to Egypt and the *shoulder injury*? Since the youngest child is now said to be ten years old, not eleven, presumably the trip to Egypt would have taken place relatively late in 1993.

Also, what year was it when Mayfield made contact with Nelson to ask about law school?

[ValerieUSA]

"He was very much an American, and we needed a white guy for the right accent," said Shahrir Ahmed, president of the mosque.

Yes, I wondered about that quote, too. Was Ahmed hesitant to have black American Muslims teach English to African immigrants because they would have the wrong "accent" or was he referring to Arab immigrant Muslims at the mosque having the wrong accent? How many people at that mosque speak English as a first language?

In a 2003 interview following the arrest of two brothers from his mosque who were attempting to join Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan (after raising funds for the trip at the mosque) he said this about the American born men who had spent part of their childhood in Saudi Arabia: Ahmed said the Bilals were well-liked and admired for their ability to speak both English and Arabic. "Their reading of the Koran (in Arabic) was extremely nice," he said.

Found in the van with the shopping bag of detonators was an audio cassette tape of Koran readings in Arabic. I wonder if the Beaverton mosque makes recordings of Koran readings by their members with nice accents?

[Sacajaweau]

The stuff that is comiin out is causing more questions than answers.

Mayfield met his wife on a blind date while stationed at Ft. Lewis. Not for nothing, but only a "strange" Muslim with a devious intention would feed a Muslim to an American and both Mayfield and sniper John were at Ft. Lewis at the time. I'm speculating that both Mayfield and sniper John were "secret Muslims" much earlier.(The sniper was a real ladies man and there's just a teeney-weeney possibility sniper John arranged the blind date.) (Williams & Green married at Ft. Lewis in March of 1988, the same year as the Mayfields except it SAYS they married in Nevada).

I wonder WHEN she came from Egypt.

Sniper John and Battle are both going through court processes involving children. 2000-2001

I hate to say it, but these guys are running the same track over a long period of time.

Since Mayfield had married a Muslim by the time he went to college, I wonder what he participated in, i.e., I'd like to see his personal library.

[ValerieUSA]

Also from the article about the arrent in Sept 2003 of the Bilal brothers:

"This is a big disappointment," Shahriar Ahmed said Thursday, when Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal, 25, and Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, 23, each pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy and firearms possession.
"It was beyond stupid," Ahmed said of the now-admitted conduct by the brothers, whom he called "well-liked" worshippers at the Bilal Mosque (no relation). "It was beyond -- anything."
As part of their plea agreements, the brothers admitted to possessing firearms in the United States for training purposes.

Now, if they were getting firearms training here, who was training them?

regarding other defendants in the Portland Seven case:
...Ford and Battle also face firearms-related charges, and Lewis and Ford are charged with money laundering for allegedly wiring money to other co-defendants who were in Asia as part of the alleged conspiracies.
...In his agreement, Ahmed Bilal said that after the group's failure to reach Afghanistan he went to Indonesia, where he obtained contact information -- from a person from Portland -- for an Indonesian-based terrorist organization. The agreement said he was trying to decide whether he wanted to participate in a violent "holy war" by other means.
The person who gave Bilal the contact information is not named in the agreement. None of the Portland Seven was in Indonesia at that time, according to previously released information about the case.

[ValerieUSA]

in the LA Times article about Mayfield we can find a lot of speculation from the Spanish investigators - how much of it is reliable I can't tell:

....The FBI's interest in Mayfield stems from a fingerprint that turned up on a bag containing detonators and other bomb-related equipment left in the bombers' stolen van found at the Alcala de Henares train station outside Madrid hours after the bombings. The fingerprint was among the physical evidence that Spanish investigators shared with a special FBI evidence analysis team that traveled to Madrid to assist with the case, according to Spanish and U.S. investigators.
The FBI "document exploitation" team compared the evidence with past terrorism cases and discovered the potential match between one of the numerous fingerprints found in the van and a U.S. citizen with military experience who was already under investigation for suspected terrorist activity.
FBI sources said one of the fingerprints matched Mayfield's. There had been no previous indication that Mayfield had been under investigation for suspected terrorist activity.
The discovery intrigued investigators because of the possible involvement of a U.S. military veteran, a rare figure in Al Qaeda cases, and the suspicion that he could have played a significant role in the plot.
Unlike previous Al Qaeda plots, none of the suspects accused of planting the bombs is known to have trained at the terrorist network's camps in Afghanistan. Spanish police think someone with explosives experience helped the attackers build the bombs at a tumbledown cottage outside Madrid.
The American fits the profile of such a potential lead bomb-maker or trainer, along with two Moroccan fugitives who are hard-core Al Qaeda-trained veterans and potential "field commanders" of the bombing cell, investigators said.
...A senior Spanish investigator told the Los Angeles Times three weeks ago that a fingerprint found in the investigation of the train bombings resembled the fingerprint of a man described as a "U.S. military veteran" wanted by U.S. agents in connection with Islamic terrorism. In subsequent days, two high-ranking Spanish police officials and a U.S. law enforcement official confirmed to The Times that the lead, involving a U.S. veteran connected to Al Qaeda, was being pursued. The veteran was someone who had been under investigation by U.S. agents for some time, the investigators said.
The lead intrigued Spanish investigators because they thought an operative with knowledge of explosives or military expertise helped the team of mostly Moroccan suspects build the remote-control bombs that were used in the March 11 attacks, which killed 191 people aboard four commuter trains and helped bring down the ruling party in national elections three days later.
But as recently as Monday, two Spanish police officials said the lead remained inconclusive. "The American has the profile of an expert who could have supervised the bomb-making," a high-ranking Spanish police official said. "And obviously he's someone the Americans are very concerned about because of his background. But we are told the fingerprint match is not conclusive. We can't say right now that it is the same person."

[Grampa Dave]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/715524/posts

Oregon sheriff: 'We had our suspicions' (al-Qaida in Oregon)
Seattle Times ^ | July 13, 2002 | Hal Bernton, Mike Carter and David Heath


Posted on 07/13/2002 1:59:56 AM PDT by sarcasm


BLY, Ore. — This hard-knocks hamlet seems an unlikely place to search for clues to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

It sits on an arid plateau in Southern Oregon, about 50 miles east of Klamath Falls. With a population of about 250, it has a couple of cafes and small stores, an antique shop, and the razed foundation of an abandoned lumber mill.

But in late 1999, federal authorities and other sources say, the area had something far more unusual: militant Muslims scouting a ranch outside of town as a possible training camp for jihad fighters.

That aborted effort has now thrust Bly into the thick of a Seattle-based FBI and federal grand-jury investigation into al-Qaida's activities in the United States. Authorities suspect that a group of Seattle-based Muslims, mostly U.S. citizens, were operating as a "cell" in support of al-Qaida, and that opening a terrorist-training camp was part of their plans.

For about six months beginning in September 1999, Semi Osman — a cleric at a small Seattle mosque named Dar-us-Salaam — lived on the ranch, a few miles outside town. Osman is now in federal custody in Seattle, charged with immigration and weapons violations and under investigation for terror-related activities.

Sources say Osman's visitors on the Bly ranch included two members of a London mosque led by Sheik Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical cleric believed to be an al-Qaida recruiter, and militant members of Osman's Central Area mosque. Some of the visitors rode horses and fired automatic weapons, according to people in the area.

Police began to watch the ranch closely, said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger.


THE SEATTLE TIMES



"There were reports of gunfire and of a large group of suspicious, or unusual, people there," Evinger said.

Gunfire is common in rural Southern Oregon, where many residents carry arms and engage in target practice or hunting.

But this information concerned the sheriff enough that he turned it over to the FBI. He heard nothing again until after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the information gained new importance. His detectives were briefed about the federal investigation late last year, Evinger said.

"I think even before then, we had our suspicions about what this might be," he said. "You expect terrorist activity in the big cities. I think people need to realize this sort of stuff can happen anywhere."

Neighbors say Osman, now 32, kept a low profile, tooling around in a beat-up 1984 Toyota sedan and at one point commuting to Klamath Falls to work as a mechanic, according to neighbors and a former employer.

Still, he and his family got plenty of notice. In this community of bluejeans and boots, the balding, bearded Osman dressed in a tunic and skullcap. His wife, an American who converted to Islam, dressed in a long robe and headscarf in traditional Islamic fashion. A young daughter attended the local school.

Some Bly residents who knew Osman say that he was friendly and polite, and often spoke of his hopes to join the U.S. Army after he left the ranch. Osman, a naturalized British citizen with permanent U.S. residency status, was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve.

But at least one neighbor, retired carpet layer Perry Thompson, clashed with Osman.

Thompson said Osman was a high-strung man who didn't like unexpected visitors. On two occasions, Thompson said, an armed Osman confronted him. In one of the incidents, Thompson said, Osman forced him to stop his truck by driving up from behind and parking in front of him, then he jumped out of his car, ran to his window and pointed a semiautomatic handgun at his head.

"He had all kinds of guns," Thompson said. "And he was belligerent."


HAL BERNTON / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Later residents of the Bly ranch have found spent and live ammunition from semiautomatic weapons.


A Bly tow-truck driver, Billie Livingston, also reports an unsettling visit to the ranch. Coming to jump-start a dead battery, she was surprised to find a half-dozen men, some of whom appeared foreign-born, intently watching her.

Among the men at the ranch in December 1999 were two men who federal investigators believe were sent by al-Qaida leaders to check out the ranch as a potential training camp.

The men's presence in Southern Oregon was documented in a speeding ticket issued that December in Klamath Falls. According to a source, the police officer became suspicious of the occupants of the car and checked their identification.

Later, federal agents would determine the men had arrived from Great Britain two weeks earlier.

"Those men," the source said, "were there for a bad purpose."

The two men were followers of Abu Hamza, leader of the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, the heart of militant Islam in Europe.

Abu Hamza applauded the Sept. 11 attacks. His mosque had been attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and by Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines jetliner with explosives in his shoes.

Osman's attorney, Robert Leen, denies his client has any involvement with terrorism. Others who know Osman say that he was uncomfortable with the militancy of his visitors and that he sought to distance himself from them.

The Bly ranch had been owned by Esther Fisher Schneider, who died in August 1999 at age 82. She had moved from Washington state to Bly in the 1990s with a sheep rancher named Ivan Rule, known among Bly residents for espousing extreme right-wing political views.

The property is now listed as owned by the late Schneider and the Barraka Communal Corp., a nonprofit corporation created by Rule and an American Muslim woman who lived with him in 1999.

In February 2000, Osman and his family left the ranch. The daughter and son-in-law of neighbor Perry Thompson, Lona and Paul Azevedo, moved in. In walks on the property, the Azevedos have collected ammunition from semiautomatic and other weapons.

Rule, who no longer lives in Bly, was not available for comment. The IRS has a tax lien against him in Fremont County, Colo., in the amount of $10,041, dating from May 1994.

Lona Azevedo says she continues to pay rent to Rule through a Bly post office box, but she is not sure where he lives.

Meanwhile, yesterday in London, Abu Hamza denied any knowledge of a plot to set up a terrorist camp in Bly, or of a cell of al-Qaida supporters in Seattle.

"We have quite a good following in America, but we don't keep a structure because we are talking about principles," he told NBC.

"I have friends everywhere," he said. "When you are arresting people in America under suspicion, you might as well arrest the rest of the planet."

[ValerieUSA]

FASCINATING!

[Grampa Dave]

Or they could have had fire arm training at this al Fuqra compound/site before we helped to close it down.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/566591/posts

Why is there an Islamic Village in the foothills near Fresno?
KFSN TV 30 Fresno, CA ^ | 11-07-01 | Kevin Quinn


Posted on 11/08/2001 8:14:41 AM PST by Clovis_Skeptic




.Why is there an Islamic Village in the foothills near Fresno? There's an airstrip and neighbors complain of gunfire. Kevin Quinn takes you inside Baladullah, California.
Sorry, no transcript as of now. Video only. Worth the effort to view.

The video provides a look at this compound in the foothills above Fresno, CA. Pre 9-11, a Fresn County Sheriffs deputy was killed by a member of this peaceful Islamic community. The suspect (in the beginning trial phase still) broke into a empty nearby foothill home, when deputies arrived this guy was lying in the hallway floor with a rifle, and killed one deputy. This video is the first investigative reporting we have had on this Islamic community. The trail leads to FUQRA, a known terrorist group operating all over the world, and have several communities such as this one all over the USA.

Here is an excerpt from an article of the Sacramento Bee...


California links of terrorists probed:
Federal and state investigators try to unearth 'sleeper' agents.
By Sam Stanton and Andy Furillo

Bee Staff Writers
(Published Sept. 30, 2001)

The compound Beyond seeking out ties to bin Laden-linked terrorist networks, officials are keeping tabs on another Islamic group near Fresno because of the recent killing of a sheriff's deputy in an area home, apparently stemming from a botched burglary.(this was no burglary according to all accounts)

There is no evidence that the Fresno group has been involved in any terrorist activities, officials say.

The group, according to a federal source, is part of Fuqra, an organization whose name means "poverty" in Arabic and which has had compounds in several U.S. areas.

Some Fuqra members in other areas have been implicated in past years in domestic terrorist attacks, and the State Department has labeled the group, known formally as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as "an Islamic sect that seeks to purify Islam through violence."

The group south of Fresno operates an 1,800-acre compound called the International Quranic Open University, which sits on the former site of the drug addiction recovery cult Synanon.

The compound, a series of mobile homes shaded by trees, also serves as a U-Haul rentals location. A resident there last week refused to talk to a reporter, referring inquiries to a Visalia attorney who did not respond to a message seeking information.

Authorities have been studying the compound since the Aug. 21 slaying of Fresno County Sheriff's Deputy Erik Telen. Officials charged 20-year-old Ramadan Abdur-Rauf Abdullah with murder in the killing, apparently stemming from a botched burglary at a rural home.

James Oppliger, Fresno County's chief deputy district attorney, said the suspect claimed he had been living at the compound seeking psychiatric treatment from the Quranic university.

Oppliger said he since has begun studying the group and its possible connections to other organizations.

(Zavia Books) is the bookstore for this Islamic compound. It is called Koranic Open University. Note the books being sold. One of them is prefaced by ( Sheik Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani [Gilani]) a known terrorist. The trail leads from Baladullah (actually Miramonte, CA) to Pakistan, where Sheik Gilani lives. He is the head of Fuqra.

[ValerieUSA]

The connection between Rule, known for "extreme rightwing views" and a Muslim woman is part of a pattern. I'm not sure I would characterize his rantings as rightwing politics if I heard them, but the general population would say that about irrational, vehement racist and anti-Jew views. My guess is he spouted Nazi rhetoric, and the Nazis have been strange bedfellows with militant Islam for 3/4 of a century.

[rwfromkansas]

lol.....just talked to my mom and she said "Lydia Mayfield.....I know her from the newspaper! Her name was in there all the time."

Apparently she wrote letters to the editor quite often. My mom never read her crap though.

[Oorang]

I haven't caught up on this thread so I apologize if this has been posted.

Check out this connection. Here is a link to a fundraiser they had at the Beaverton mosque June 2001. Note the keynote speaker is Shaykh Rabih Haddad (GRF)

http://www.bilalmasjid.com/FundRaisingFlyer.htm

Now, look who Rabih Haddad is:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A49164-2002Oct18&notFound=true

Here's a quote from Haddad that's in the above article:"You may not like it, but [financially supporting jihad] is part of the religion,"

[rwfromkansas]

"(How pathetic and stupid - why didn't get this delightful child a puppy?)"

Well, I had toads growing up. Grasshoppers are a bit weird, but whatever floats your boat.

My mom just told me she remembers seeing Lydia write in to the Hutchinson News a lot, but she does not remember the letter in which she threatened a president.

[rwfromkansas]

Want to contact the brother of Brandon, Kent Mayfield, the one who has been saying stuff like....oh:

"At least half of us realize that this is a crooked administration," Kent Mayfield said. "This is still a free country, but look what happens if you voice that."

"He definitely has been wrongly detained," he said. "My brother's life is in jeopardy for being profiled by the FBI for his faith and for his vocal criticism of this administration."

Let's show him some free speech, folks. I saw him on the local news last night, and he said the "Bush administration" was "targeting" Brandon because of his anti-Bush views.

This moron should not be teaching in a public school, but he is, the Hutchinson, KS, school district. Beause of this, you can contact him at the school e-mail account he has.

mayfieldk@usd308.com

Want to contact his biological mother (he also has a stepmom quoted on this page)? His biological mom has been saying stuff like this:

"This is mainly a case of the government trying to prove to the public that they're on the job, and they're using the Patriot Act to disrupt lives, destroy careers and shatter families," she said.

"The public needs to be more aware of the broad powers this government has gotten to get into our lives using the Patriot Act. We need to act quickly to do away with it before more citizens are terrorized."

mayfielda@usd308.com

WANT TO DEMAND THAT THESE TWO TEACHERS, WHO JOINED THE HUTCH DISTRICT ONLY IN 2001, BOTH BE FIRED? HERE IS THE E-MAIL FOR THE SUPERINTENDENT, WYNONA WINN:

winnw@usd308.com

[Grampa Dave]

Oorang has some interesting data about this mosque.

[ValerieUSA]

7:30 pm ... Recitation from the Holy Quran ... Br. Ahmed Bilal

[ValerieUSA]

You can watch some news video from Portland about Mayfield from here:

http://www.kptv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1850975

[ValerieUSA]

Mayfield's stepmother, Ruth Alexander, of Halstead, Kan., where Mayfield grew up, recalled a compassionate child who once kept a pet grasshopper. Her stepson joined the Army in 1985 soon after graduating from high school "because he felt that was the right thing to do," she said.

Mayfield was a serious young man who never smoked or used drugs and rarely drank alcohol, said his brother, Kent Mayfield, a 35-year-old junior high school art teacher in Halstead.

He was raised in a nonreligious household, but one with roots in the Mennonite church in the Midwest the family had left a generation earlier, Kent Mayfield said.

He was posted at Fort Lewis, where he met Egyptian-born Mona, who had immigrated to Olympia as a child.

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/04/05/08/wir_portland001.cfm

[Selene]

Uncle Sam's Jihadists - What's the U.S. military doing about radical Muslim soldiers Not enough. By Deanne Stillman
http://slate.msn.com/id/2080770/

>>>One of the weirdest stories of a radical Muslim is that of Ali Mohamed. According to various reports that surfaced after 9/11, Mohamed came to the United States in 1986 while he was a major in the Egyptian army, and secretly, a member of Islamic Jihad. After marrying an American, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of sergeant. A busy soldier, he taught a class on Islamic fundamentalist perceptions of America to special forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., and also taught at the JFK Special Operations Warfare School where he stole classified military documents. After he was discharged from the Army in 1989, he hooked up with Osama Bin Laden's nascent al-Qaida operation. Using his new American passport and connections, he spent the '90s traveling around the world helping plot terror operations. The FBI finally arrested him in 1998, and he eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring with Osama Bin Laden to attack Western targets.

[Selene]

http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=50479
September 23, 2002
Explosive residue tests on Kariye's luggage thrown out

PORTLAND - Tests that found explosive residue on the bags of a Muslim cleric arrested at Portland International Airport have been reviewed at an FBI crime lab, and thrown out, the man's lawyer said.
Stanley Cohen, a New York civil rights attorney who took the case of Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, said the FBI tests showed the bags were free of explosives residues.

Cohen said he is negotiating with prosecutors to release Kariye pending trial.

"I'm talking to the government about a bail package," Cohen said. If that doesn't happen, he said, the defense would request another detention hearing.

Kariye, who served as an imam at the Islamic Center in Portland, was arrested Sept. 8 at Portland International Airport as he tried to board a flight to the United Arab Emirates.

He was charged with Social Security fraud dating from 1983 to 1995 and has pleaded innocent. But at a detention hearing Sept. 10, assistant U.S. attorney Charles Gorder cited the tests in arguing Kariye should be held in jail until trial.

The case is one of scores around the country of Muslim men held on charges unrelated to terrorism, although they were arrested by federal agents or members of a terrorism task force.

Cohen, who took Kariye's case over the weekend, said the FBI sent a letter explaining the negative test results to the U.S. Attorney's Office on Wednesday and was then forwarded to U.S. District Judge Donald Ashmanskas.

FBI spokesman Beth Anne Steele declined to discuss the test results Sunday and referred questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Phone messages left there were not returned.

At a Sept. 10 detention hearing, Robert Ramos, a senior inspector for the U.S. Customs Service, testified that two bags carried by Kariye's party tested positive for explosives residue.

Ramos added that he had tested hundreds of bags, and Kariye's was the first to test positive for explosives.

Residue collected from a third bag tested positive for cocaine, but a second test on the bag turned up negative for cocaine, Ramos testified.

Cohen said he may argue the residue test used at the airport is faulty.

Cohen spoke about Kariye's case Saturday at a gathering of about 200 Muslims, many in skull caps and sporting bushy beards. To cheers and applause, he advised the Portland crowd not to cooperate with law enforcement in the terror probe unless they have a lawyer present.

He urged them to fight back "in an appropriate and lawful manner."

Police have not said they suspect Kariye of terror-related offenses, other than to say that he was detained by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force. Kariye's supporters question why the task force was even involved, because Kariye has only been charged with Social Security fraud.

Searches of public records show Kariye was affiliated in 1992 with a Chicago-area Muslim charity, Global Relief Foundation, that was later investigated for ties to Al-Qaida. A lawyer for the charity denied it was used to funnel money to terrorism, and said Kariye's name does not appear on charity documents after 1992.

[ValerieUSA]

In the video you will notice that Ahmed looks Arabic and has a foreign accent ans has mastered the innocent, baffled, hurt demeanor while being interviewed by news reporters.