Ex-suspect criticizes anti-terrorism laws
PORTLAND – Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon lawyer who got a rare apology from the FBI after being wrongly held for this spring’s deadly train bombings in Madrid, argued Friday for reform of the anti-terrorism laws that allowed federal agents to search his home and detain him for two weeks.
The 37-year-old attorney spoke to civic leaders at Portland’s City Club, in one of several recent appearances for the family law attorney and father of three young children.
Recounting his harrowing arrest and abrupt release, Mayfield said he feared for his life in jail when other inmates believed he was a terrorism suspect. He said he felt hopeless as his attorney told him he could face the death penalty for killing 200 people in Spain – an act with which he had nothing to do.
He only regained some trust in the U.S. judicial system when he was freed, Mayfield told his audience.
“There was something inherently wrong about how this all went down,” Mayfield said. “Just yesterday I told my wife that it felt like an ordinary day. I’ve stopped shaking.”
FBI agents swept into Mayfield’s law office May 6 and arrested him on a material witness warrant, after matching his fingerprint to one on a plastic bag containing detonators found near the site of the March 11 bombings in Spain. Federal officials also cited Mayfield’s ties to a local mosque as contributing to their suspicion.
The agency freed him two weeks later after Spanish forensic experts convinced the FBI that the match was an error. The agency’s Portland office issued an apology.
The inspector general of the Justice Department is currently investigating the mistake, Mayfield’s public defender, Steven Wax, said Friday. Mayfield is considering filing a lawsuit.
Earlier this month, Mayfield spoke at a civil rights forum in Chicago. He promised Friday to make public appearances to encourage voters to consider civil rights issues this election season – regardless of their political leanings.
Mayfield, owner of his own small legal business, said he voted for George Bush in 2000, but said he will not vote for Bush this year.
Mayfield said he never should have been placed in jail, even if the government had reason to believe he had information about the Spain bombings. Without probable cause of a crime, such witnesses should be put up in the Hilton, Mayfield said.
But his faith in the judicial system remains, he said. He was glad, he said, to find that the FBI agents who searched his law office had not removed a poster of the Bill of Rights he had hung on a wall.
The lunchtime speech was billed as a public debate between Wax, Mayfield and an official either from the FBI or the U.S. Attorney’s office. U.S. Attorney in Oregon, Karin Immergut, issued a statement saying she could not attend because of the possibility that Mayfield will file a civil lawsuit against the government for his arrest, and because of secrecy rules surrounding grand jury proceedings.