EATTLE, May 21 - As the authorities said they were
continuing to investigate a Portland lawyer arrested two weeks ago in
connection with the deadly Madrid bombings and then abruptly released on
Thursday, questions swirled on Friday about the strength of the evidence
against him.
The focus was on a fingerprint lifted from the bombing scene that the
authorities in the United States had said they traced to the lawyer,
Brandon Mayfield. Mr. Mayfield, a Portland immigration and family lawyer,
was arrested May 6 and held as a material witness in the Madrid attacks,
which killed 191 people and injured more than 2,000.
After his release on Thursday, Mr. Mayfield, 37, went home to his wife
and three children, who still do not know why he was detained, relatives
said. But even after his release, the authorities said Mr. Mayfield was
still a material witness.
The Spanish authorities confirmed on Friday that fingerprints found on
a plastic bag filled with detonators and matched by American authorities
to Mr. Mayfield, a former Army lieutenant and convert to Islam, belonged
instead to an Algerian, Ouhnane Daoud. Prints found on the bag, which were
sent to American authorities when the Spanish found no match in their
database, were from the thumb and middle finger of Mr. Daoud's right hand,
Spanish law enforcement officials said Friday.
Law enforcement officials in the United States, under a court order along with all other parties in the
Mayfield case not to discuss it, declined to explain the apparently
erroneous fingerprint match.
Spanish investigators said Mr. Daoud's prints had turned up after an
exhaustive search of police files following the initial routine database
checks, which had proved fruitless. The Spanish police sent the prints to
investigators abroad, a standard procedure, investigators said. That led
the F.B.I. to declare a match in its database, where Mr. Mayfield's
fingerprints were registered because he was an Army veteran. But Spanish
authorities continued to comb police files at home.
A senior F.B.I. official said on Friday
that Mr. Mayfield had not been ruled out as a suspect and that he
continued to be a subject of interest.
"The whole case hasn't played out yet,"
the official said. "We're going to have to work through
it."
But the F.B.I.'s handling of the case prompted second-guessing from
legal observers on Friday.
"This administration adopted the policy very early on after 9/11 of
arrest first and ask questions later on the theory that we can't afford to
follow people around and risk a terrorist attack," said David Cole, a
Georgetown University law professor who has been critical of the
administration's antiterrorism tactics.
The Bush administration is thought to have used the material witness
statute in at least 50 cases to arrest people who it says may have
important evidence, including Jose Padilla and Zacarias Moussaoui.
Mr. Cole said Mr. Mayfield's arrest might have been "an honest mistake"
and a legitimate use of the material witness statute.
But he added: "Since Sept. 11, the government has employed the material
witness authority in many instances where it lacks probable cause to
believe an individual has engaged in criminal activity, but it has
suspicions nonetheless. It's an end run around the probable cause
requirement for detention."
Meanwhile, at the Mayfield home in Aloha, a suburb of Portland, Mr.
Mayfield's children were giddy over his return, staying up until 3 a.m.
Friday to play with him. But his wife, Mona, and mother, AvNell Mayfield,
still worried because Mr. Mayfield was under court supervision and in
"close contact with the courts," his mother said.
Sarah Kershaw reported from Seattle for this article, and Eric
Lichtblau from Washington. Dale Fuchs contributed reportingfrom
Madrid.
