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US lawyer arrested over Madrid bombings
Last updated at 00:00am on 07.05.04An American lawyer has been arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings.
Muslim convert Brandon Mayfield, 37, from Oregon, was taken into custody by the FBI on a material witness warrant, law enforcement sources said.
Such warrants are obtained in cases where people are 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.
Some 191 people were killed and 2,000 injured when bombs ripped through commuter trains on March 11 in Madrid. The attacks have been linked to al Qaida.
Mayfield is the first person in the United States to be drawn into the investigation.
It is understood that Mayfield's fingerprints matched prints found on a bag in the wreckage of the Madrid bombing.
His home in Portland was searched, as was his office, a government official said.
So far 18 people have been charged in connection with the bombings in Spain - six with murder and the others with collaboration or belonging to a terrorist organisation.
Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Portland, confirmed two search warrants had been served yesterday.
Mayfield wife, Mona, said her husband was "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.
The couple have two sons aged 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 was reportedly searched by FBI agents yesterday.
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 Qaida and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
Mayfield represented one of those people, Jeffrey Leon Battle, in a custody case involving Battle's son.
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.
Ms Rowden was awarded custody of the boy.
