US man held over Madrid bomb

2004-05-07 09:20

Aloha, Oregon - FBI agents have arrested a lawyer from Portland, Oregon, as part of the investigation into the deadly train bombings in Spain.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen, was taken into custody on Thursday on a material witness warrant, said a senior law enforcement official in Washington DC. The FBI also searched Mayfield's home in Aloha, near Portland.

Mayfield's fingerprints were found on materials related to the Madrid bombings, said a second senior law enforcement official.

Beth Anne Steele of the FBI in Portland confirmed two search warrants had been served on Thursday in Washington County, which includes Aloha.

Mayfield's wife said he is "a good man, a good father, a good husband".

"It's just unfair. It's unfair to myself and it is unfair to my children," she said.

Mona Mayfield said her husband is 37, and that they have two sons, ages 10 and 15, and a 12-year-old daughter.

Her husband, a former Army officer, was born in the small Oregon coastal community of Coos Bay, she said. He converted to Islam in 1989, she said, and attends a mosque in the nearby town of Beaverton that reportedly was searched by FBI agents on Thursday.

Portland lawyer Tom Nelson, who described himself as Mayfield's friend and mentor, said that he received a call from Mayfield on Thursday, pleading for help. Nelson said Mayfield would be represented by a public defender.

"His wife was in tears because of the way the search was conducted," Nelson said.

Nelson also said Mayfield had never travelled to Spain.

Material witness warrants, usually kept confidential by a federal judge, are used by the government to hold people suspected of having direct knowledge about a crime or to allow time for further investigation into the witness. Suspects may be held indefinitely without formal charges.

Officials would not provide any further details about the man or his alleged connection with the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2 000 others. Spanish authorities blame the attack on Islamic extremists.

Eighteen people have been charged to date in Spain - six charged with mass murder and the others with collaboration or with belonging to a terrorist organisation.

Earlier this year in Portland, the last of six men and a woman were sentenced on charges of conspiring to wage war against the United States by helping al-Qaeda and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.

Mayfield represented one of those people, Jeffrey Leon Battle, in a custody case involving Battle's son. Law enforcement officials did not know of any contacts between Mayfield and the other Portland terrorism defendants.

Mayfield had attempted to have Battle's son, who went by the Muslim name Esau in Portland, placed in the custody of an uncle who had also converted to Islam, rather than with his mother and Battle's former wife, Angela Rowden of Houston. Rowden was awarded custody of the boy, who now goes by the name Geoffrey.

- AP