US backs down over Madrid
2004-05-25 08:03
Los Angeles - US authorities on Monday dropped all action against a lawyer detained in connection with the Madrid train bombings, admitting he was the victim of a humiliating identification error.
US federal Judge Robert Jones dismissed the "material witness" proceedings against American attorney Brandon Mayfield, 37, four days after he was released from a two-week stint behind bars in Portland in the northwestern state of Oregon.
"Due to the misidentification by the FBI of a fingerprint, the court orders the material witness proceeding dismissed," the judge wrote in a terse document.
Islamic convert Mayfield was freed on Thursday amid reports that Spanish authorities had said that fingerprints found on a plastic bag near the attack scene, and initially linked to Mayfield, belonged to another person.
Authorities had believed that his fingerprint had been found on a bag containing detonators and explosives found at a site linked to the terror bombings.
But, the Spanish police later told the FBI's legal attache in Madrid that they had identified "the latent print in question to a different individual", prosecutors said in a court motion.
Jones also ordered all seized evidence, including money taken from Mayfield's safe deposit box, to be returned to Mayfield and that sealed documents linked to his May 6 arrest be made public.
Last week, court documents showed, US fingerprinting expert Kenneth Moses testified under oath that a latent fingerprint forwarded by the Spanish authorities was that of Mayfield.
US Justice Department and FBI officials were tight-lipped about the case of Mayfield, who officials had suspected of involvement in the Madrid terror strikes that killed almost 200 people and injured nearly 2 000.
Mayfield has been adamant he was in no way linked to the terror attacks linked to radical Islamist groups.
"I want to thank my family and friends who were supporting me through what I will call a harrowing ordeal," he said after being released last week.
"There's a story to be told here, but now is not the time, and now is not the place. I want to decompress with my family. I had nothing to do with the bombing in Madrid, Spain," he was quoted as saying.
Mayfield had served as a child-custody lawyer for one of the Portland Seven, a group of Muslims accused attempting to wage war on the United States.
The detention was the first in the United States linked to the Madrid bombings, the worst terrorist violence since the September 11, 2001 attacks.