Ore. attorney is held in Madrid bombing

ALOHA, Ore. -- FBI agents arrested a Portland attorney yesterday as part of the investigation into the deadly train bombings in Spain, federal officials said.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen, was taken into custody on a material witness warrant, said a senior law enforcement official in Washington, D.C., speaking on condition of anonymity. The arrest is the first known in the United States with connections to the March 11 bombings in Madrid. The FBI also searched Mayfield's home, which he shares with his wife, the official said.

Mayfield's fingerprints were found on materials related to the Madrid bombings, said a second senior official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Portland, confirmed two search warrants had been served Thursday in Washington County, which includes Aloha. She would not release further details.

Outside Mayfield's home in Aloha, near Portland, his wife, Mona, said yesterday evening that he is "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," Mona Mayfield said.

Material witness warrants, usually kept confidential by a federal judge, are used by the government to hold people 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.

Officials would not provide any further details about the man or his alleged connection with the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others. Spanish authorities blame the attack on Islamic extremists, possibly linked to Al Qaeda.

Eighteen people have been charged to date in Spain -- six charged with mass murder and the others with collaboration or with belonging to a terrorist organization. The FBI and other US agencies have warned that Al Qaeda or its sympathizers might attempt to attack mass transit systems in major US cities this summer.

Mona Mayfield said her husband is 37, and that the two have two sons, ages 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 nearby Beaverton that reportedly was searched by FBI agents yesterday.

Portland attorney Tom Nelson, who described himself as Mayfield's friend and mentor, said yesterday afternoon that he received a call from Mayfield yesterday, pleading for help. Nelson said Mayfield would be represented by a public defender. Nelson also said Mayfield had never traveled to Spain.

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 Qaeda and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.

Mayfield represented one of those people, Jeffrey Leon Battle, in a custody case involving Battle's son. Law enforcement officials did not know of any contacts between Mayfield and the other Portland terrorism defendants.