The FBI detained an Oregon man they say may be linked to the Madrid train bombings

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, in a Newsweek web exclusive, reports that the Portland, Oregon, lawyer was detained after evidence was provided by Spanish authorities that the man’s fingerprints allegedly were found on bomb-related evidence associated with the Madrid train bombings.

The man was identified as Brandon Mayfield, a convert to Islam who is tangentially linked to one of the chief defendants in the so-called “Portland Seven” case—a suspected terror cell in Oregon whose six surviving members pled guilty last year of plotting to fight for the Taliban against U.S. soldiers during the war in Afghanistan.

Sources said that Mayfield had been under round-the-clock surveillance by the FBI for some time. According to law-enforcement sources, he was picked up by agents in Portland today and is being held as a “material witness” in a Grand Jury investigation—a status that allows the Justice Department to hold him in secret without formally filing charges against him.

[. . .]

Sources said Mayfield's fingerprints were found on a bag containing bomb material connected to the Spanish attack. But officials said considerable uncertainty remained about Mayfield's role. The lawyer’s previous connection to the Portland Seven was tangential; he had represented the interests of one of the chief defendants, Jeffrey Battle, in a custody matter involving Battle’s 6-year-old child that arose after he and the other suspects were arrested in the fall of 2002.

Mayfield's brother Kent, reached at his home in Halstead, Kansas, confirmed the arrest and the surveillance and said he suspected government agents had tapped his telephone line.

"They yanked him out of his home without giving any kind of information to his family," Kent Mayfield told Reuters. "I can swear up and down my brother has no connection to terrorist attacks."

[. . .]

Brandon Mayfield is a former Army officer and a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, Kent Mayfield said, but he declined to elaborate.

Agents raided Brandon Mayfield's home, taking computer equipment and his wife's credit cards, leaving her with just a driver's license, Kent Mayfield said, adding that the couple had three children.

"I think the reason they are holding him is because he is of the Muslim faith and because he is not super happy with the Bush administration. So if that's a crime, well you can burn half of us," Kent Mayfield said.

Cross-posted California Yankee