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WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2006 — A Justice Department inspector general report found that problems with FBI forensic analysis and performance led to the mistaken arrest of an Oregon man as a suspect in the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombings. Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield was incorrectly identified by the FBI as a suspect in the attacks because of incorrect fingerprint data. Mayfield was arrested on May 6, 2004, and secretly held as a material witness for two weeks. He was released when the Spanish National Police eventually matched the fingerprints to an Algerian national. Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine's...

A former POW in Iraq names an Ashley-based reservist in a complaint against the U.S. Army. And he compared the treatment at his camp to the abuse that's making international news. Hossam Shaltout said widespread mistreatment from soldiers in Camp Bucca, where he was imprisoned last year, was as inhumane as that depicted in recent photos from Camp Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Shaltout described Camp Bucca as a "torture camp" where soldiers beat and humiliated prisoners, had them lie naked atop each other or pose in sexual positions. "They wanted us to have sex with each other," Shaltout said. He...

Fingerprint links Oregon with Spain Officials have been watching Brandon Mayfield of Aloha since two weeks after the March 11 Madrid terror bombings Saturday, May 08, 2004 LES ZAITZ, NOELLE CROMBIE, JOSEPH ROSE and MARK LARABEE 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...

JEDDAH, 6 December 2003 — Saudi authorities have detained two expatriates for questioning. The two continue to be held in a jail in Jeddah for as yet unspecified reasons, Arab News has learned. David Heaton, a British national and convert to Islam, and Abdullatif Ibrahim Bilal, a US national, were taken into custody for questioning last Thursday. “We confirm that David Heaton is currently being detained,” Barry Peach, a spokesman for the British Embassy, told Arab News. “The embassy has requested a counselor to assist Heaton and has been in touch with his next of kin, but up to now...

When controversial New York attorney Stanley Cohen came to court last week seeking to represent Portland Seven defendant Patrice Lumumba Ford, the focus was on Cohen's prior representation of the spiritual leader of a Portland mosque where Ford had worshiped. How can Cohen fairly represent Ford, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked, when Cohen's former client Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye is being investigated for allegedly helping to finance the same conspiracy with which Ford is charged? According to an FBI affidavit unsealed Friday, Kariye may have raised $12,000, through unidentified worshipers at Masjed As-Saber in Southwest Portland, for Ford...

<p>August 12, 2003 -- HOWLS of rage went up after the Joint Terrorism Task Force, guns drawn, arrested Maher Hawash in the parking lot of an Intel Corp. facility in March and placed him in solitary confinement. The protests intensified as prosecutors detained him without charges for more than a month in an Oregon jail while they pored over the evidence.</p>

PORTLAND, Ore.--Attorneys for two American Muslims charged with conspiring to wage war against the United States have asked a federal judge to throw out evidence gathered under the FBI's new spy powers in the Patriot Act. The attorneys could not offer specific arguments for why the evidence should be dismissed, because the government has classified affidavits that explain its reasons for collecting the information. The attorneys asked to suppress 36 secret warrants that allowed the FBI to electronically intercept 271 conversations and bug the Portland-area home of at least one of seven defendants. FBI agents arrested the members of the...

FBI affidavit alleges imam bankrolled plot 08/23/03 LES ZAITZ One of six men charged with trying to join the Taliban and kill U.S. soldiers said Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, leader of Portland's largest mosque, funded the overseas trip with $12,000 that came from mosque members, according to a newly released FBI affidavit. Defendant Jeffrey Battle also was secretly recorded telling how Kariye, religious leader of the Islamic Center of Portland, participated in a prayer session at the mosque with the group just before the men left and later directed them to return if they couldn't get into Afghanistan, the affidavit said....

Maher 'Mike' Hawash holds his five-month-old daughter Sarra Hawash in their family home in Hillsboro, Ore., in this May 1998 family handout photo. Hawash, a software engineer pleaded guilty Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2003, to a charge of aiding the Taliban, agreeing to testify against other suspects in exchange for the dropping of other terrorism charges. (AP Photo/Hawash Family) Ore. Engineer Pleads to Terrorism Charge By ANDREW KRAMER, Associated Press Writer PORTLAND, Ore. - A software engineer who unsuccessfully tried to enter Afghanistan to fight against U.S. troops pleaded guilty Wednesday to aiding the Taliban and agreed to testify against other...

<p>PEOPLE: Cheerleader says new student was always smiling, laughing.</p> <p>Bellingham High School cheerleader Briana Axelsson is the kind of person who wants to make newcomers feel welcome, so it seemed like a natural thing to her to sit down with John Lee Malvo in the high school cafeteria in the fall of 2001.</p>

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The leader of Portland's biggest mosque sits on the board of an Islamic charity that's being investigated for terrorist links, federal tax records show. The Oregonian reported Tuesday that Alaa M. Abunijem has served on a three-person board in charge of the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America since at least 1999, according to federal documents reviewed by the Portland newspaper. An FBI agent testified in an Idaho federal court last week that the bureau's evidence "clearly points" to the Islamic Assembly's role in promoting terrorism. Abunijem and other directors of the Islamic Assembly have not...

After he was arrested on federal terrorism charges, Portland Seven defendant Jeffrey Leon Battle told investigators “that his intentions were to go fight in the jihad against American and coalition troops” and named other defendants as taking part in the alleged plot, according to recently filed court documents. Battle’s comments were detailed at length in a motion filed with the U.S. District Court by attorney Andrew Bates requesting that his client, Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, be tried separately from the other defendants. In the motion, which was filed Wednesday, Bates alleges that Battle told a federal informant that he wanted to:...

PORTLAND — Federal prosecutors on Monday (April 28) charged a former Intel Corp. engineer with allegedly conspiring to aid Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a move to “levy war” against the United States, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News on Tuesday (April 29). The ex-Intel engineer, Maher “Mike” Hawash, was arrested in March and has been held by the U.S. government without charge as part of what the report called a “secret investigation.” Hawash, 38, a U.S. citizen of Arab descent, worked for Intel from 1992 to 2001, when he was laid off....

April 28, 2003 Mike Hawash charged with terrorism related crimes PORTLAND - A Hillsboro man is the latest from our area to be charged with terrorism related crimes. Mike Hawash, an independent contractor who had been working for Intel was charged this morning with conspiracy to wage war on the US and support terrorism. Hawash has been detained for more than a month. The charges against him are related to the so-called "Portland Six" terrorism case, in which several men from our area went to china in an attempt to enter Afghanistan and join with al Qaeda and the Taliban...

Four days ago Warblogging reported on the story of Maher (Mike) Hawash. Mr. Hawash's problems have now been the subject of an article in the New York Times. Mr. Hawash is a programmer, working at Intel, who was detained by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force as a material witness. He has so far spent just about two weeks in jail without being charged with a crime and without being questioned or told why he is detained. He is being kept in solitary confinement. Mr. Hawash was detained by FBI agents wearing helments, body armor and carrying assault rifles...

Three of the so-called Portland Six--(from left to right) Patrice Lumumba Ford, Jeffrey Leon Battle, and Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal--were closer to Afghanistan than authorities have so far disclosed The seven muscular men would have stood out in any hotel. All heavily bearded, they hung around the lobby, doing chin-ups from the rafters and sparring in the courtyard of the Chini Bagh Hotel in Kashgar, China, where I saw them in late October 2001, about 185 miles from the Afghan border. THIS MONTH THREE of them were named as part of the so-called Portland Six, which U.S. authorities allege is a...

<p>October 13, 2002 -- Federal prosecutors found Islamic books and Internet printouts - including one titled "How Do I Train Myself for Jihad?" - in the apartment of a suspected member of a Oregon terrorist cell.</p> <p>The suspect, Jeffrey Leon Battle, also considered attacking synagogues or schools, the prosecutors said.</p>

PORTLAND - ABC News reports the FBI is investigating possible al Qaeda terror cells in several major U.S. cities, including Portland. Agents are reportedly focusing on New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Houston, Detroit, Miami, Buffalo, Seattle and Portland. The FBI is particularly interested in several dozen U.S. citizens believed to have trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan during the late 90s. The news has piqued interest in Oregon as questions arise about certain members of a mosque in southwest Portland. First there was the arrest last week of Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, a leader of the mosque the Islamic Center of...

PORTLAND — A former Washington state Transportation Department engineer yesterday has found himself, his imam and his mosque swept into an unfolding investigation by Portland's joint terrorism force led by the FBI. Farid Adlouni, a civil engineer and U.S. citizen who once worked out of the Vancouver office, was profiled in The Oregonian newspaper yesterday as a man with business ties to a top Osama bin Laden aide and who has attracted FBI scrutiny. Adlouni, 38, yesterday said he had "done nothing wrong." The imam, Mohammad Abdirahman Kariye, also a U.S. citizen, was recently charged with two felony counts of...

<p>A writer for a former Pittsburgh Islamist magazine is connected to a Portland, Ore., mosque that is under FBI scrutiny with the arrest of its imam, or religious leader.</p> <p>Tawfiq Tabib, 49, who wrote for an Islamist magazine published in Pittsburgh from 1991 to 2000, lives in the same apartment complex as Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, who was arrested Sunday at Portland International Airport with one-way tickets to the United Arab Emirates.</p>