Posted on 05/24/2004 6:51:28 PM PDT by gcul
FBI apologizes to man linked to Madrid bombing 25 May 2004 00:37:43 GMT
By Teresa Carson
PORTLAND, May 24 (Reuters) - A Muslim attorney from Oregon, held for two weeks, often manacled and chained, as a material witness in the March 11 train bombing in Spain, was cleared on Monday with an apology from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"Hamdullilah, thank God I'm here," 37 year-old Brandon Mayfield told a packed press conference.
Mayfield, who was released on Friday, had been held under the 1984 material witness law because Spanish authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had thought that a single fingerprint on a bag with detonators found near a Madrid train station matched his print.
But the Federal District Court said on Monday that "he was the victim of a misidentification by the FBI" and at a separate FBI press conference, Robert Jordan, the FBI agent in charge of the Oregon office, apologized to Mayfield and his family for the hardships his detention has caused.
"We are not investigating Brandon Mayfield at this point," Jordan said.
Surrounded by his wife and three children, Mayfield described his imprisonment as "humiliating and embarrassing."
People held under the material witness act should not be thrown in with convicted criminals awaiting sentencing and people arrested for probable cause of committing crimes, he said.
"During my incarceration I was often manacled and chained," he said. He declined to say if FBI agents became physical with him when he was arrested.
"People should wake up. We need to start protecting our civil liberties," Mayfield said, also blasting the Patriot Act. "The material witness statute obviously gives the government too much power and must be amended, if not repealed," he said.
Mayfield's defense team is asking the courts to investigate leaks by U.S. government authorities and asking the government to preserve the fingerprint information, but Mayfield declined to say if he would bring legal action against the government.
The fiasco has "blown my (law) practice completely apart," Mayfield said, because of negative publicity and the fact that agents had access to confidential legal files in his single practitioner office.
Mayfield expressed concern about others "languishing away" under the material witness law.
This "shouldn't happen to anybody," Mayfield said.
So in your opinion, the government has the right to take any individual, put him away for a few weeks, comb through the confidential records of both him and his legal clients, ruin his small business in the process, and leave him with about 10% of the income stream he had before this "minor intervention" and then just walk away without paying anything to compensate him.
If he complains he is a "slime-bucket lawyer".
Welcome to the gulag, comrade.
It appears that they bungled the secret search, claimed that his kid'spanish homework were "spanish documents" and decided he was a criminal because he represented criminals.
Now I'm no fan of attorneys, especially criminal defense attorneys, but the bottom line is that we really do need them if our government is going to make these kind of value judgments while violating our Constitutional Rights.
Patriot Act II would allow SAC's to make the call on whether a secret search would be conducted - removing any judiical oversight prior to the search. Do we really want to allow this?
I guess a better question would be do we really want risk allowing this kind of power under the control of future Administrations/DOJ's/FBI/CIA/DHS? (Dept. of Homeland Security)
In a word, NO! And FReegards, Abundy, nice to bump into you.
Nice to bump into you too...been terribly busy here. My boss actually called my attention to the report...professional interest you know. We occassionally run into foul-ups (not of this magnatude) that create concern as to the integrity of all investigations. Damage control than becomes a pain in the arse with serious long-term repercussions.
My apologies too you andin advance to the spelling and grammar nazis for the spelling and grammar mistakes inthe previous post...
I have trouble buying into things like Patriot so long as little old ladies get frisked at airports while young middle-eastern men get a pass. Same with boarder invaders. We either get serious or not. Also, as others pointed out, something is odd about this story.
Also, if the CIA did do this to "smoke" someone out, it still shows a lack of consideration of the current political climate. With the mediots (good term BTW) hammering the American public 24/7 about the prison scandal, and Bush's poll numbers dropping, this isn't the time run overt (not covert) operations that will do nothing but incense the public.
The Spanish fingerprint was only a partial one.
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