Spain Links American to Madrid Bombings (Oregon Lawyer )

The Las Vegas Sun ^ | May 07, 2004 at 9:31:45 PDT | DANIEL WOOLLS

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

MADRID, Spain (AP) -

The fingerprints of the American lawyer arrested in Oregon in the Madrid terror bombing probe were found on a bag containing detonators like those used in the March 11 attack, the Spanish government said Friday.

The plastic shopping bag was found inside a stolen van left near the train station from which three of the four bombed trains departed, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Brandon Mayfield, a 37-year-old lawyer and former U.S. Army officer who converted to Islam, was taken into custody Thursday by FBI agents, who also searched his home in the Portland suburb of Aloha.

It was the first known arrest of a U.S. citizen in connection with the March 11 attack in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others.

The detonators in the bag were of the same kind used in the attacks, the government has said previously.

The van was found in Alcala de Henares, about 20 miles northeast of Madrid. Inside, police also found an Arabic-language cassette tape with verses from the Quran, investigators have said.

The government's announcement of the van's discovery, after insisting that Basque separatists were the prime suspects, was its first public admission of a possible Islamic link in Spain's worst terrorist attack.

The bombings have been blamed on an alleged Moroccan-based Islamic extremist cell with possible links to al-Qaida.

Mayfield, was arrested Thursday on a material witness warrant and has not been charged with any crime, according to a senior law enforcement official in Washington, D.C., speaking on condition of anonymity. A material witness warrant allows the government to hold people suspected of having direct knowledge about a crime or to allow time for further investigation into the witness.

As a former Army officer, Mayfield's fingerprints would be on file with the government. A law enforcement official said Mayfield's fingerprints were not on file because of any crime or as part of the government's terrorism databases.

Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Portland, said two search warrants had been served Thursday in Washington County, which includes Aloha. She would not release further details.

Mayfield passed the Oregon bar in 2000 and largely kept a low profile in the Portland legal community until 2002, when he volunteered to represent Muslim terrorism suspect Jeffrey Battle in a child custody case.

Battle was among six Portland area residents who were sentenced last year on charges of conspiring to wage war against the United States by helping al-Qaida and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.

Mayfield was not involved with Battle's defense in that case. Law enforcement officials in Washington did not know of any contacts between Mayfield and the other Portland terrorism defendants.

Mayfield converted to Islam in the late 1980s and regularly attended Friday prayers at a Beaverton mosque, said mosque administrator Shahriar Ahmed.

Friends and family said they were shocked by the arrest.

Outside their home near Portland late Thursday, Mona Mayfield described her husband as "a good man, a good father, a good husband." The couple have two sons, ages 10 and 15, and a 12-year-old daughter.

Portland attorney Tom Nelson, who described himself as a mentor, said he received a call Thursday afternoon from Mayfield asking for help.

"His wife was in tears because of the way the search was conducted. The FBI apparently hurt things in the house, left things in disarray," Nelson told reporters outside Mayfield's home. "He is a regular, run-of-the-mill guy."

Nelson also said Mayfield had never traveled to Spain.

"Obviously, the government holds all the cards in these kinds of situations," Nelson told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "It can release any kind of information it thinks it wants to release and the other side is prohibited to speaking on the merits so I can't speak to the merits."

"He's in no position, to, say, do forensic tests of his own" on the alleged fingerprints, Nelson added. He said he was speaking as a friend and was not acting as Mayfield's legal counsel.

Mayfield's father, Bill Mayfield, of Halstead, Kan., said his son spent most of his youth in Kansas and attended Washburn University in Topeka, Kan. Bill Mayfield said he was not able to talk to his son after the arrest.

"It's ludicrous. There's no way he did this," Bill Mayfield said.

Spanish authorities blame the attack on Islamic extremists, possibly linked to al-Qaida. Eighteen people have been charged, six with mass murder and the others with collaboration or with belonging to a terrorist organization.

---

Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi and Andrew Kramer in Portland and Curt Anderson in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

[DWPittelli]

"Obviously, the government holds all the cards in these kinds of situations," Nelson told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "It can release any kind of information it thinks it wants to release and the other side is prohibited to speaking on the merits so I can't speak to the merits."

That's BS. He may not be able to "speak to the merits" because he has not seen the evidence, or because he believes his friend may be guilty and he doesn't want to tie his friend to one story, making it harder to change that story, but he is certainly not prohibited from doing so.

[Grampa Dave]

Typical AP.

They make this report sound like it came from Spain, and it is basically a compilation of what we have posted since last evening.

[Grampa Dave]

Below is the link to the update thread posted this morning on Free Republic:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1131292/posts

There is a lot of detail that wasn't last night's thread.

[Happy2BMe]

"As a former Army officer, Mayfield's fingerprints would be on file with the government. A law enforcement official said Mayfield's fingerprints were not on file because of any crime or as part of the government's terrorism databases."

O.K.

Spain is alleging Mayfield was in Spain, and had contact with the materials used in the train bombings from fingerprint evidence located in Spain.

So my $64 question is how in hell did they link the bombing, the van, the paraphernalia and bomb materials to Mayfield?

Mayfield had to have been watched for sometime.

NOTE: One GOOD thing from this is hopefully more Americans will come to their senses about Islam, Islamic jihad cells in our country, and tell others. Many others.

[TrueBeliever9]

Does anyone have a photo? I want to see if I have seen this guy at my condo (GAZA WEST inside the Beltway).

[TrueBeliever9]

So my $64 question is how in hell did they link the bombing, the van, the paraphernalia and bomb materials to Mayfield?

THANKS to President Bush the FBI and ICE have some technology now - denied to them during the Clinton administration. All prints are in the database - so they ran them and viola!

[devolve]

Do a quick search on my FR posts last night.

I posted his photo on several FR threads.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

They make this report sound like it came from Spain

That is why I posted it and it is the usual collection of previous info and it contained this sentence:

The fingerprints of the American lawyer arrested in Oregon in the Madrid terror bombing probe were found on a bag containing detonators like those used in the March 11 attack, the Spanish government said Friday.

I thought that was a biggie.

[MeekOneGOP]

[Robert357]

It is possible that some of the U.S. personnel converted to Islam to be able to infiltrate the OBL network but flipped afterwards. Sort of stray human missiles.

OK, now I really want to know more about this guy's military record in the US Army......

[TrueBeliever9]

Thanks. I always like to know what these insurgents look like. I can't say that I have seen him, but I was trying to imagine him with a shaved head. Many of them, when they attend the local Mosque here, shave their heads! Their hairdos change more than a woman.

[ValerieUSA]

an excerpt from the LA Times report:

Mayfield's brother Kent, reached at his home in Halstead, Kan., told Reuters that his brother was a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy but no terrorist.
"I think the reason they are holding him is because he is of the Muslim faith and because he is not super happy with the Bush administration," the brother said. "So if that's a crime, well, you can burn half of us."

[The Scourge of Yazid]

Remember: These guys are the same stunningly brilliant theoreticians who considered it a wise idea to insert a known Egyptian jihadist (Ali Muhammed) into the United States special forces!
Also remember that a spindly, lice-ridden hippie from Marin County was able to infiltrate Al Qaeda-to meet and greet Bin Laden no less-and yet the Director of our CIA thinks that it's too hard to crack this wily terrorist network.
To top it all off, Walker Lindh was just the latest in a string of failed attempts to bust up these Sunni bastards! If you don't recall the saga of Aukai Collins-a young Irish tough also from Cali-just go and purchase "My Jihad" and you'll learn all you need to know about our inept war against the terror-masters.
Add to the list the personal valet for UBL, the two informants that were lost due to the Federal Bureau of Idiots ineffectual management of the second World Trade Center plot and you've got yourself a cornucopia of dunderheaded moves over the course of a decade.
If we had but 50 John Millers or Steve Emersons in the right places, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Jemmah Islamiyah, et. al., would have practically vanished by this point in time.

[devolve]

Join the CIA and show us all how to do it.

We'll be waiting to see the results on CNN.

[The Scourge of Yazid]

Hey, my job's scathingly brilliant, Menckenesque critiques not hunting down evildoers. If I were at the CIA I'd probably be fired by now.

[MeekOneGOP]

ItsonlikeDonkeyKong
Since May 7, 2004

Welcome to FreeRepublic.com .....

bump !

[herkbird]

I love your tag line:

Where did they get all those flags to burn, do they have a store over there that sells them?

We should send them a bunch of flameproof American flags that won't burn. Their frustration at not being able to burn them would be well worth the cost, although they would still destroy our flag, just not in the custom they have been use too.

Or we could send them flags that burn like flash powder, that may teach a few a very painful lesson.
Some time you have to fight fire with fire.

[breakem]

onpoint

[The Scourge of Yazid]

I never quite realized the cleavage between our two cultures until the destruction of Towers 1,2, and 7 that September.
A few weeks subsequent to this terrible attack, in a febrile state of nationalism and patriotic fervor, I decided to purchase a few flags from the Mid-east and hold an impromptu flagburning like the hippies of yore.
Thinking of the most repugnant example of Sharia law in the world, I walked into Ace-probably the best flag store in the Northeast-in lower Manhattan and attempted to buy the national flag of Sudan. However, when I asked the store owner for this rather disgusting symbol of intolerance; lo and behold, he had no idea what I was talking about.
You see, like most compassionate Americans he had probably ignored some of the more beastly depredations of the tinhorn dictatorships spread throughout the Mid-East, which continue to torment us unceasingly.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should start holding a programme of "Two Minute hate" across America; I'm simply calling for a more rational assessment of some of the existential threats we continue to face on a daily basis. I don't want Queens to turn into Kashmir or Sri Lanka.