Brandon Mayfield

Brandon Mayfield (born July 15, 1966) is a Muslim-American convert in Washington County, Oregon, who was wrongfully detained in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings on the basis of a faulty fingerprint match.

He served in the United States Army Reserve from 1985 to 1989, and then as an officer in the Army in Bitburg, Germany, from 1992 to 1994.

He met his wife Mona, an Egyptian national and the daughter of a college professor, on a blind date in Olympia, Washington, in 1986, and converted to Islam shortly afterwards.

They have lived in Beaverton, Oregon, off and on since 1989.

Although he was a regular worshiper at a Beaverton mosque prior to his arrest, some of his colleagues were unaware of his religious beliefs.

The imam of the mosque has described Mayfield as "very patriotic."

The Mayfields have four children.

He studied law at Washburn University and Lewis & Clark College, receiving his Juris Doctor degree from Washburn University School of Law in 1999, and practicing family law in Newport before moving to the Portland area.

Mayfield performed work for the Modest Means Program of the Oregon State Bar, which matches attorneys who are willing to work at reduced rates for low-income clients.

In 2003, he offered child custody legal aid to Jeffrey Leon Battle, one of the Portland Seven, a group of people convicted of trying to travel to Afghanistan to help the Taliban.

On May 6, 2004, the FBI arrested Mayfield as a material witness in connection with the Madrid attacks, and held him for two weeks, before releasing him with a public apology following Spanish authorities identifying another suspect.

A United States DOJ internal review later acknowledged serious errors in the FBI investigation.

Ensuing lawsuits resulted in a $2 million settlement.

An initial ruling declared some provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act unconstitutional, but the United States government appealed, and the ruling was overturned at the Ninth Circuit level on technical standing grounds.

Mayfield's case has been referenced in numerous scientific, political, and social journals.

Brandon Mayfield was born in Coos Bay, Oregon, and grew up in Halstead, Kansas.

Following the 2004 Madrid train bombings, fingerprints on a bag containing detonating devices were found by Spanish authorities.

The Spanish National Police shared the fingerprints with the FBI through Interpol.

Twenty possible matches for one of the fingerprints were found in the FBI database and one of the possible matches was Brandon Mayfield.

His prints were in the FBI database as they were taken as part of standard procedure when he joined the military.

He became the prime suspect because of his conversion to Islam and because he had represented one of the Portland Seven, despite those being first-amendment protected activities.

The FBI concluded that the fingerprints were a "100 percent match" on March 20, 2004.

According to the court documents in the Honorable Judge Ann Aiken's decision, this information was largely "fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ."

The FBI finally sent Mayfield's fingerprints to the Spanish authorities on April 2, but in an April 13 memo, the Spanish authorities contested the matching of the fingerprints from Brandon Mayfield to the ones associated with the Madrid bombing.

Further, the Spanish authorities informed the FBI they had other suspects in the case, Moroccan immigrants not linked to anyone in the US.

The FBI continued surveillance of Mayfield and his family despite the information received from the Spanish authorities, and misrepresented to a secret FISA court that the Spanish authorities had simply ruled Mayfield's match "inconclusive" when in fact they had deemed it "negative."

Mayfield was concerned for the safety of his children and wife, and according to his father, he suspected that he was under surveillance by the federal authorities.

In the weeks before his arrest, Mayfield's family was under the impression that their house had been broken into at least twice, although nothing was stolen.

According to court documents, the FBI used national security letters in order to wiretap his phones, bug his house, and search his house several times, including collective personal hygiene products to test for DNA.

As was discovered during the court case, the FBI's records show that this fingerprint, despite the sworn testimony of FBI and DOJ agents, was not an exact match but only one of 20 prints "similar" to the ones retrieved from Madrid.

Based on that list of people with "similar prints" the FBI launched an extensive investigation of all 20 individuals using letters of national security.

The investigation included medical records, financial records, employment records, etc. on all 20 people and their families.

It was during this investigation that Brandon Mayfield's name rose to the top of the list.

On May 6, the FBI arrested Mayfield at his office in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland.

The arrest was similar to the contemporary Mike Hawash case, under a material witness warrant rather than under charge; he was held with no access to family and limited access, if any, to legal counsel.

The FBI initially refused to inform either Mayfield or his family why he was being detained or where he was being held.

His family found out the extent of the allegations by watching the news, learning that someone had leaked the nature of the FBI investigation to the Associated Press, precipitating the rushed arrest.

He was at first held at a Multnomah County jail under a false name; he was later transferred to an unidentified location.

His family protested that Mayfield had no connection with the bombings, his passport was expired, he was at home on the day of the attack, and had not been off the continent in over 11 to 14 years.

Before his arrest, Spanish authorities informed the FBI in a letter dated April 13, 2004, that they reviewed the fingerprint on the bag as a negative match of Mayfield's fingerprint, though this letter was not communicated to Mayfield's attorneys.