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| Mayfield's fingerprints linked to 3/11 |
| 2004-05-08 |
| Investigators have linked Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer in Portland, Ore., to the Madrid terrorist bombings through a fingerprint lifted from a bag containing detonators discovered near the train station where three of the four bombed trains originated, according to sources in Spain and the United States who are familiar with the probe. The bag, which contained cell phone detonators similar to those used in the March 11 attacks, which killed 191 people, was found in a stolen van left in the town of Alcala de Henares. It was parked near a house where police say the bombs were assembled. Tracing another set of fingerprints found in both the van and the house, as well as the origin of the cell phones, police found a cell phone shop in Madrid owned by Moroccan Jamal Zougam, whom Spanish police describe as the plot's mastermind. When Spanish investigators were unable to identify one of the fingerprints on the bag in the van, they distributed it to other countries, including the United States, where authorities linked it to Mayfield, said the sources, who asked for anonymity because a judge has imposed a gag order on government officials in the case. Mayfield would have been fingerprinted when he served in the military. Mayfield, 37, a Kansas native and Army veteran who worked on Patriot missile batteries, was detained on a material-witness warrant Thursday. Mayfield's attorney and relatives say they are baffled by the alleged connection between the mild-mannered Muslim convert and the Madrid plot, noting that Mayfield has not been out of the country in more than 10 years. Mayfield told Thomas Nelson, the Portland lawyer who is acting as his spokesman, that he has never been to Spain, that his passport expired in October of last year and that he has never met anyone from Morocco. "Brandon is flabbergasted," Nelson said. "He has no explanation for these charges. He thinks this is crazy." Nelson said he believes that Mayfield's only travel abroad occurred when he was in the Army and serving in Germany. Mayfield's younger sister, Amy Sikes, said in a telephone interview from Halstead, Kan., that her brother "is no terrorist by any means" and that the family "is in shock" over his detention. Sikes said Mayfield, like many others in the family, was critical of U.S. foreign policy but "he was not a radical" and does not have violent tendencies. Nelson said that when FBI agents searched Mayfield's home Thursday, they pulled out an "oddly shaped blue plastic bag" and asked Mayfield's wife if "there were any of these around" the house. Nelson said Mona Mayfield had the impression, although the FBI agents did not say so, that it was the kind of bag on which her husband's fingerprint was allegedly found in Spain. "From Mona's description, it was a really weird-looking bag, oblong and in the shape of a blackberry," Nelson said. "It was the kind of thing you get if you were at a duty-free store." Nelson said there was no such bag in the Mayfield house. But federal officials were clearly upset that their investigation was rushed to a premature close. "The plan was to sit on him longer, but it started to get out in a big way, so they had to move," said a law enforcement official who declined to be named, citing the gag order. Roy Witt, a next-door neighbor of Mayfield's, said that for the past several weeks he had noticed men in unmarked cars parked in the neighborhood night and day, apparently watching Mayfield's house. One official said "there are differing views" among U.S. and Spanish authorities on the quality of the match between the fingerprint on the detonator bag and Mayfield's prints, but said the FBI "believes this is a pretty good match. There is not a lot of concern about that." Mayfield earned his law degree in 1999 from Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan., and passed the bar in Oregon the following year. He took a job in the seaside town of Newport but was unhappy, because there was no mosque and no Islamic community there. His former boss, lawyer Richard Diaz, said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Mayfield felt compelled to speak out as a Muslim. "He spoke publicly a couple of times in Newport, saying that people shouldn't think all Muslims are terrorists." Mayfield and his family moved to Aloha, a suburb of Portland, and regularly attended the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton. He came to Friday prayers and volunteered to teach English to immigrants, said Shahriar Ahmed, leader of the mosque. "He was well-spoken, a quiet person, very much into civil rights and people's rights being trampled," Ahmed said. Sikes portrayed Mayfield as having some of the family contrarian streak, like that of a late grandmother, Lydia Mayfield, who once drew federal attention for a scathing letter to a local newspaper about former president George H.W. Bush. "She was just a little-bitty old lady, and one day a couple of FBI agents turned up on her doorstep wanting to know what she was about," Sikes said, adding that nothing came of the encounter. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 I hope this isn't another Richard Jewell or Steven Hatfield (or whatever his name was) I'd feel better if the fingerprint was a perfect match. While a 15 point match is short by one the professionally recognized 16 point standard of peer accepted fingerprint verification, it seems airtight when compared to how other countries (like India) accept only an 8 point correspondence. However remote the chance, there is a significant forensic link according to all available evidence. An atrocity like Madrid's deserves global attention, even if its home country demonstrates less than acceptable reciprocity towards this sort of crime against humanity. [Does anyone else here have more data concerning the "berry" shaped backpack supposedly involved in this (where the print was lifted) and claimed to have been seen elsewhere? I've heard there were other copies of the same backpack found within the cell. Any cites are welcome (a Google search yielded nothing).] |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-08 9:35:43 PM |
| #2 I hope this isn't another Richard Jewell or Steven Hatfield (or whatever his name was) I'd feel better if the fingerprint was a perfect match. |
| Posted by: Anny Emous 2004-05-08 10:29:42 AM |
| #1 a next-door neighbor of Mayfield's, said that for the past several weeks he had noticed men in unmarked cars parked in the neighborhood night and day, apparently watching Mayfield's house. Heyzeus, glad the FBI still in top form. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-05-08 6:32:16 AM |