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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."