Fingerprint links Oregon with Spain

Officials have been watching Brandon Mayfield of Aloha since two weeks after the March 11 Madrid terror bombings

Federal investigators are examining whether a Washington County lawyer shipped materials later used by terrorists to blow up four commuter trains in Madrid on March 11, a law enforcement official said Friday.

Brandon Mayfield, 37, a former U.S. Army officer and Aloha father of three, was linked to the attack that killed 191 people by a fingerprint on a bag containing detonating devices. The bag was discovered by Spanish investigators inside a van that was near the train station where three of the trains originated, officials said.

Officials told The Oregonian that the U.S. investigation of Mayfield started within two weeks of the Madrid attacks and that Mayfield was put under physical and electronic surveillance. Spanish authorities also had pressed their American counterparts to pick up Mayfield for reasons the officials won't explain.

The FBI is also investigating Mayfield's links to other Portland-area residents who haven't been charged, officials said.

One of Mayfield's attorneys, Tom Nelson, stressed again Friday that Mayfield had not been arrested and is not a defendant in a criminal case. He repeated accusations that the government has leaked damaging information about Mayfield that should be confidential.

"They've painted him largely as associated with terrorists," Nelson said. "The government has been operating very cavalierly with his life and his livelihood."

Mayfield was detained Thursday at his West Slope law office by federal agents and is being held as a material witness under a long-standing federal statute designed to keep secret the identity of grand jury witnesses.

He isn't likely to be taken before a federal grand jury soon because investigators anticipate he would not talk voluntarily, and he won't be given immunity to talk, officials said. Instead, the arrest gives the FBI time to finish their ongoing investigation.

The FBI and federal prosecutors were forced to quickly detain Mayfield -- long before they had planned, several officials said. Although they attempted to tighten the amount of information getting out about the case, authorities eventually decided to detain Mayfield after Spanish authorities leaked news of his connection to the Madrid bombing to reporters in Europe.

Mayfield appeared briefly in U.S. District Court in Portland on Thursday afternoon and is now being held at a Multnomah County jail under a false name.

The material witnesses law is most commonly used when potential witnesses may be reluctant to cooperate, in danger or likely to flee.

Prosecutors used the same law to detain Maher "Mike" Hawash, a former Intel software engineer now serving a federal prison sentence for a failed plot to fight against U.S troops in Afghanistan. He was held as a material witness for weeks before he was charged with a crime by prosecutors in April 2003.

"I would not assume that this is another Mike Hawash case," Nelson said. "I rather feel that they will not bring charges" against Mayfield.

Nelson said authorities told Mayfield the reason he's been held, but he has not been interviewed extensively. Nelson refused to elaborate on specifics of the case, citing a court order. But he said he had a private conversation with Mayfield on Thursday at Portland's federal courthouse.

"He was calm, very concerned and still very sharp," Nelson said. "He's trained as a lawyer, and he's a good lawyer. He was bouncing ideas off me."

He said Mayfield has not been to Spain and "we certainly can prove that he was in his office and meeting with clients" at the time of the attacks in Madrid.

Nelson, who does not specialize in criminal law, said Mayfield is now represented by the Federal Public Defenders Office in Portland. His attorney there did not return phone calls.

When AvNell Mayfield's dogs began barking Thursday afternoon, she looked outside and saw two FBI agents walking up to her front porch in Hutchinson, Kan., northwest of Wichita.

They stayed for 30 minutes, asking questions about her son Brandon. She said the agents wanted to know where Brandon Mayfield had gone to school and if he had been to Spain.

"There were a lot of general questions about Brandon, but every once in a while they would ask if he traveled a lot," she said. "I was in shock. They wouldn't tell me what was going on."

Watching the agents walk away from the house, AvNell Mayfield said she had a weird feeling and called her son's house in Aloha. His wife, Mona, picked up.

"She was hysterical," AvNell Mayfield said. "The FBI people had been dumping out drawers in their house, confiscating computers, taking the kids' video games and going through papers. They had already trashed his law office."

AvNell Mayfield said Mona, who works as her husband's paralegal, is a highly intelligent woman and "strong mother" who speaks many languages. Before meeting Brandon, Mona lived in Paris and London and traveled with her father, who was a college professor, AvNell Mayfield said.

She said Brandon is a soft-spoken, intelligent man who has repeatedly talked about his disdain for the USA Patriot Act, a controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that gave law enforcement agents sweeping new authority.

"He felt it was a violation of people's civil rights" and reminded him of when Japanese Americans were interned after Pearl Harbor and abuses by Nazis during World War II, she said. "But he wasn't angry enough to blow up people."

After 9/11, she said, "Brandon said he was concerned about his children and his wife being targeted."

Mayfield's father, Bill Mayfield, said his son suspected he was under surveillance by federal authorities.

"He told me over the phone that he figured they were probably watching him," said Bill Mayfield, who lives in Halstead, Kan., where Brandon Mayfield grew up. He was upset about it, the senior Mayfield said, but he "expected it because he's Muslim, plain and simple."

Nelson, the attorney, said it was the family's impression that their Aloha house had been broken into twice recently, though nothing had been stolen. Once, a dead bolt that they never used was locked, and another time, they came home and found digital clocks and the VCR blinking, like someone had tripped the breaker.

"They called and asked the power company about outages, but there hadn't been any," Nelson said. "It's a reasonable assumption that the FBI may have been involved, though I certainly cannot prove that."

Family members said Mayfield hasn't been to Spain and it's been 11 years since he traveled outside the United States, when he and his family took a monthlong trip to Egypt.

"He has nothing to do with Spain," Bill Mayfield said. "He has nothing to do with terrorists. He's a lawyer."

In high school, Mayfield was a sprinter on the Halstead track team. But he didn't have many other interests beyond "finding a way out of Halstead," said Mayfield's younger sister, Amy Sikes.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army, and Sikes said the family rarely heard from or saw Mayfield during his first four-year stint in the military.

According to Mayfield's service record, he joined the Army Reserve in Kansas City, Mo., in March 1985 as a combat telecommunications center operator. He enlisted for active duty in July 1985 and re-upped in September 1988 while at Fort Lewis, Wash.

Mayfield met Mona Mohamed on a blind date in 1987, while still stationed at Fort Lewis. Later that year, he brought her home to Kansas, Sikes said. His family liked her from the start. Above all else, she was good-spirited, Sikes said.

"Really bubbly and fun," said Sikes, who is 12 years younger than Mayfield, the only girl among six children. "I was young, and I remember her teaching us some kids' songs."

The Mayfields also learned that Mona was a devout Muslim. Mona was 5 when she and her younger sister moved from Egypt to Washington state with their parents, Sikes said. When Brandon Mayfield told his parents and siblings he was converting to her faith, the clan of non-churchgoers had no problem with it, Sikes said.

"Mona was the love of his life, and he wanted to please her," she said. "Brandon also did what he could to better himself the way he sees fit, and that's how he saw taking her religion."

Mayfield left the Army in August 1989. He graduated from Portland State University in August 1992 with a bachelor of science degree in general studies, a spokeswoman said. The next month he re-enlisted in the Army as an officer, serving some time in Bitburg, Germany, with the 5th Battalion, 7th Division Air Defense Artillery. He ended his Army career as a 2nd lieutenant in May 1994.

He entered the Washburn University School of Law in the fall 1996 semester. During the fall 1998 and spring 1999 semesters he transferred to Lewis and Clark College. His law degree was issued by Washburn on his 33rd birthday, May 15, 1999. He was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in April 2000.

"The evidence they found is something that warrants investigation," said Richard S. Diaz, a partner in the Newport law firm Macpherson Gintner Gordon & Diaz, which hired Mayfield in spring of 2000. "But at this point, he's only been detained as a material witness. He might have some way of being able to point to the culprit."

Mayfield came to the firm right out of law school and was inexperienced but competent, Diaz said. The young lawyer handled 36 cases in Lincoln County Circuit Court -- mostly divorce, custody and probate matters with a smattering of minor criminal proceedings -- between Aug. 11, 2000, and June 18, 2002, records show.

Diaz said he did not learn of Mayfield's faith until after he was hired and "it's not like he was going around espousing radical Muslim views."

It's clear to Diaz that the current allegations warrant further investigation. "Whether intentionally or not," he said, "he came in contact with somebody that was more closely connected with what happened in Madrid."

Others who know Mayfield say he is a family man and struggling lawyer dedicated to building his practice.

"I am very, very worried about this," his father said. "This thing is completely hokey. Anybody that knows Brandon, knows anything about him at all, knows how hokey this is. But the FBI is holding him . . . and that scares the devil out of me."

Steven Beaven, Kathleen Blythe, Bryan Denson and Lori Tobias contributed to this story. Mark Larabee: 503-294-7664; marklarabee@news.oregonian.com

update

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D82J7ED83.html

Terror arrest: Brandon Mayfield's family waits for answers

05/15/2004

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI / Associated Press

After the FBI agents left, Mona Mayfield wept at her kitchen table, then pulled herself together to survey the damage.

Her house looked like it had been robbed — every room had been ransacked, closets emptied and drawers upturned.

"They took my children's Spanish homework," said Mona Mayfield, standing in her son's room where papers were still spilling out of a half-open cupboard, one week after authorities arrested Brandon Mayfield in connection with Spain's worst terrorist attack.

Mayfield, a struggling Portland attorney and a white convert to Islam, was taken into custody at his suburban law office on May 6, after his fingerprint was allegedly found on a plastic bag in a van near the Alcala de Henares train station outside Madrid.

The bag contained detonators which officials say were of the same kind used to blow up four commuter trains in the Spanish capital on March 11, killing 191 people and injuring 2,000 others.

Eighteen people have been charged so far — six with mass murder and the rest with belonging to a terrorist organization. Mayfield is the only American to have been connected with the bombings, although he has not been charged with a crime.

Mayfield's family insists he is innocent. To them, the missing Spanish homework shows that federal agents are desperate to find evidence.

"They can turn anyone into a terrorist," said Mona Mayfield.

A former Army officer, Brandon Mayfield has not been outside the United States since serving at the Bitburg air base in Germany in the 1990s, she said.

According to senior law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the FBI is convinced the fingerprint in Madrid is Mayfield's. But Spanish officials, as well as U.S. counterterrorism experts, have raised doubts.

Three days after Mayfield's arrest, forensic experts in Spain told the newspaper El Pais that they found only eight points of similarity between the print on the plastic bag and Mayfield's, instead of the 15 required for an exact match.

Senior U.S. law enforcement officials said Mayfield had been under surveillance for several weeks before his arrest. When it became clear that news about him might leak out, the Justice Department decided to place him in custody, officials said.

It's a move that raises red flags for counterterrorism expert Michael Greenberger, a former U.S. Department of Justice official.

"The fact that they are using the material witness statute shows they don't have probable cause to arrest him. They're scrambling to find a way to detain him," said Greenberger, who now heads the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security.

Under the 1984 material witness statute, prosecutors can seek an arrest warrant and hold an individual without filing charges if the witness' testimony is considered crucial and there is a reasonable risk of the witness fleeing. In the Bush administration's war on terror, the statute has been used to detain possible terror suspects without filing charges.

Portland has its own example — one that proved doubters of an earlier terrorism investigation here wrong. Mike Hawash, a former Intel software engineer, was arrested and held for five weeks without being charged. His case led to a public outcry and a "Free Mike Hawash" campaign.

But six months later, Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiracy to wage war against the United States, as did five others accused of planning to help the Taliban fight American forces.

Mayfield has ties to Jeffrey Battle, one of the six.

Mayfield was not involved in the criminal case, but instead represented Battle in a custody hearing involving his child. Family members say a local mosque approached Mayfield, asking him to take the case.

Quanell X, head of the New Black Muslim Movement in Houston and a Battle family friend, said Mayfield went out of his way to help Battle, flying to Houston, Texas, on his own money to represent the terrorism suspect in the domestic dispute.

Mayfield converted to Islam after marrying Mona, who immigrated to rural Washington as a child.

"My initial reaction was he's a Muslim because he's married to Mona and his own heart is still Christian. He never adopted the outward symbols of the faith — he trimmed his beard and wore American clothes," said Washburn University law professor Ali Khan in Topeka, Kan., where Mayfield attended law school.

Mayfield's 63-year-old mother has come to Aloha from Kansas to bring order to her son's home.

"He was a delightful child — a happy baby who never cried," said AvNell Mayfield. "This (his arrest) is a terrible mistake," she said.

The living room of the white clapboard house had been cleaned up after the FBI raid. But the bedrooms were still in disarray.

"This is so embarrassing," said Mona Mayfield, standing in the bedroom she shared with her husband, where her clothes are spilling out of the closet. "This is not the way I live."

Mayfield's mother and his younger brother have taken a leave of absence from their jobs in Kansas to be with Mona. The Mayfield's three children, ages 10, 12 and 15, have been provided security at their local schools.

"Either charge him, so he can defend himself, or set him free," said Kent Mayfield, 35, the attorney's brother. "In the meantime, peoples' lives are being destroyed."

AvNell Mayfield recalled a sensitive boy who once nursed an injured bluejay back to health and was fond of watercolors.

She was able to see her son on Mother's Day.

"They take you in a little cubicle. There's a glass thing and a telephone, just like in the movies," she said.

Mayfield told his mother: "Usually on Mother's Day, I would have made an effort to come to you. This time you came to me."

A Bulgarian has also been arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombing:

http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/fri/may14w32.htm

MADRID (AFP) - Bulgarian police are holding a Bulgarian suspect in the Madrid train bombings, identified as Tony Rades, whom they arrested early last month, Spanish police said Wednesday.
Rades' name appeared on documents found during police raids following the March 11 attacks, and is thought to have been involved in planning them.

Spanish state radio said Rades, the first Bulgarian in the case, was linked to some of the mobile telephones used to detonate bombs left in backpacks on four suburban trains in Madrid, where the near simultaneous explosions claimed 191 lives.

The suspect, who left Spain on March 3, was arrested April 8, but his detention was not made public until Wednesday by Bulgaria's intelligence services.

Thirteen people, mostly Moroccans, are in detention in Spain in connection with the bombings, while another seven blew themselves up on April 3 when police were closing in on them at an apartment in the Madrid suburb of Leganes.

They were the presumed perpetrators of the attacks.

A further seven suspects remain at large.

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