Portland Seven lawyer detained in Madrid bombing: report

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2004

WASHINGTON (AFP) — FBI agents detained a lawyer tied to an Islamist cell, the first US detention in connection with a March bombing that killed 191 in Madrid.

Sources at the Federal Bureau of Investigation told Newsweek magazine that Spanish authorities had found Brandon Mayfield's fingerprints on a bag that had carried explosives used in the March 11 attack, which has been tied to radical Islamists.

Mayfield was detained in Portland. The convert to Islam had served as a child-custody lawyer for one of the Portland Seven, a group of Muslims accused attempting to wage war on the United States.

Sources told the weekly that Mayfield had been under round-the-clock surveillance for some while. He was held as a "material witness" in a grand jury investigation, the...