08:15 PM PDT on Thursday, May 6, 2004

By KGW, NBC, CNN and AP Staff

A Portland lawyer was arrested by FBI agents Thursday as part of the investigation into the deadly train bombings in Spain, federal officials said.

Attorney Brandon Mayfield. (KGW Photo)

KGW confirmed the man taken into federal custody is Brandon Mayfield, an attorney who converted to Islam and at one time represented Jeffrey Leon Battle -- one of the main defendants in the “Portland Seven” case.

Battle was among the members of the group who pled guilty last year to plotting to fight for the Taliban against U.S. soldiers during the war in Afghanistan.

The arrest of Mayfield, 37, is the first known in the United States in connection with the March 11 bombings in Madrid.

The Associated Press, CNN and Newsweek Magazine all reported that the FBI received evidence from Spanish authorities that Mayfield’s fingerprints allegedly were found on a plastic bag containing bomb material associated with the railway attacks.

Mayfield was taken into custody on a material witness warrant, said multiple law enforcement officials, which means he can be held and not charged.

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.

In addition, the FBI searched Mayfield's Beaverton-area home, which he shares with his wife, KGW learned. Sources told Newsweek that Mayfield had been under round-the-clock surveillance by the FBI for some time.

"I know he is innocent. Everyone knows he's innocent," Mayfield's wife, Mona, told KGW on Thursday evening.

She said her husband is probably thinking, " 'This is just appalling, this is ridiculous, these kind of charges.' "

Standing outside the couple's home, she said that Mayfield 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; the couple has two sons -- ages 10 and 15 -- and a 12-year-old daughter.

Mayfield, a former Army officer, was born in the small Oregon coastal community of Coos Bay, his wife said. He converted to Islam in 1989 and attends a mosque in Beaverton that reportedly was also searched by FBI agents Thursday.

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

AP Rescue workers cover up bodies alongside a bomb-damaged passenger train, following a number of explosions in Madrid, Spain, March 11, 2004

Other federal officials also declined to provide any additional information about Mayfield or his alleged connection with the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others. Spanish authorities blamed the attack on Islamic extremists, possibly linked to al-Qaida.

Portland attorney Tom Nelson, who described himself as Mayfield's friend and mentor, said Thursday afternoon that he received a call from Mayfield Thursday, pleading for help. Nelson said Mayfield would be represented by a public defender.

"His wife was in tears because of the way the search was conducted. The FBI apparently hurt things in the house, left things in disarray," Nelson told reporters outside Mayfield's home. "He is a regular run-of-the-mill guy."

Nelson also said Mayfield, a U.S. citizen, had never traveled to Spain.

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 U.S. agencies have warned that al-Qaida or its sympathizers might attempt to attack mass transit systems in major U.S. cities this summer.

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-Qaida and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.

Mayfield represented one of those people, Jeffrey 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.

Mayfield had attempted to have Battle's son, who went by the Muslim name Esau in Portland, placed in the custody of an uncle who had also converted to Islam, rather than with his mother and Battle's former wife, Angela Rowden of Houston. Rowden was awarded custody of the boy, who now goes by the name Geoffrey in October 2002.

Oregon Bar Association records reviewed by KGW show Mayfield graduated from law school at Washburn University in Tokepa, Kansas in May of 1999; he was admitted to practice law in Oregon as of April of 2000.