The first American arrested in the deadly train bombing in Madrid is a former Army lieutenant who lives in a nondescript suburban home and faithfully attends a nearby mosque.
Family members say Brandon Mayfield, 37, is innocent and has never even been to Spain.
But law enforcement officials there said Friday that his fingerprints had been found on bags containing detonators of the kind used in the March 11 attack, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others.
PHOTO: AP
Mayfield was arrested by FBI agents Thursday at his office in suburban Portland. He is being held as a material witness, which allows the government to detain him without filing formal charges, to allow time for further investigation.
"I think it's crazy -- we haven't been outside the country for 10 years," said his wife, Mona.
"They found only a part of one fingerprint. It could be anybody. He was in the Army and they're just trying to fit a certain profile," she said.
Brandon Mayfield's father, Bill, agreed, saying his son "has no connection to anything over there. None.
"They picked him out because they wanted someone who fit this profile," Bill Mayfield said. "This was the closest they had, and he was a Muslim."
Brandon Mayfield is an attorney who took low-income immigration and family-law clients at his practice in suburban Portland, once representing Muslim terrorism suspect, Jeffrey Battle, in a child custody case.
Battle was among six Portland-area residents who were sentenced last year on charges of conspiring to wage war against the US by helping al-Qaeda and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
Mayfield was born in Oregon and grew up in Halstead, Kansas, a small farming town about 45km northwest of Wichita. He joined the Army right out of high school and was stationed in Germany among other places. He later earned a law degree and settled down in Portland, where he and his Egyptian-born wife have three children.
"He has always been a delight," said his stepmother, Ruth Alexander of Halstead, recalling a compassionate child who once kept a pet grasshopper. "This is positively unbelievable. He was never in any trouble growing up."
Professor Ali Khan teaches international law at Washburn University School of Law in Kansas, where Brandon Mayfield was a student and helped organize a Muslim Student Association in 1998.
"I think his Islam was much more liberal and infused with Kansas and American values," Khan said.
Mayfield met his wife on a blind date in 1987 while he was stationed at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Washington. Records from Washoe County, Nevada, show the two were married in 1988. Their children are aged 10, 12 and 15.
Their youngest was born on Bitburg air base in Germany, where Mayfield was stationed in the air defense unit. Mona Mayfield, 35, said her husband's only trip to the Middle East was in 1993, when the couple and their children took a 30-day leave to travel to Egypt. Mayfield was honorably discharged in 1994, after a shoulder injury.
Mayfield received his undergraduate degree from Portland State University, where his favorite topic was constitutional law.
"If the Constitution could be a religion -- that would be his religion," his wife said.
Mayfield converted to Islam in 1989 after his marriage, Alexander said. He became a regular at a mosque near their home, where his red hair and white skin stood out.
"We have a Bible in the house. He's not a fundamentalist -- he thought it was something different and very unique," Mona Mayfield said of her husband's conversion.
Mayfield would show up at the mosque for the Friday ritual of shedding his shoes, washing his bare feet and sitting on the carpets to hear services. He did not, as some devout Muslims do, pray five times a day at the mosque, said administrator Shahriar Ahmed.
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