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 PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The day before a Portland attorney was wrongly arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings, an FBI official stated in an e-mail that the agency did not have enough evidence to arrest the man on criminal charges.
The recently declassified e-mail, written by Portland FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele in May 2004, also noted that the attorney, Brandon Mayfield, was a Muslim convert. And it said the FBI had a plan to arrest Mayfield "if and when" his supposed link to the March 2004 terrorist attack "gets outed by the media."
Mayfield was arrested a day later under the material witness law, which allows the arrest and detention of witnesses who might flee before testifying in criminal cases. The FBI said at the time that fingerprints found on a bag of detonators near the bombings had been matched to Mayfield.
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