Portland, Ore.
A Portland lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, was arrested in Oregon this week in connection with the deadly March train bombings in Madrid. The FBI detained Mayfield for questioning after a fingerprint on a bag of detonators abandoned in Madrid was identified as his. Mayfield, 37, is a Kansas native and Army veteran who converted to Islam in 1989. His only known link to radical Muslims came last year, when he represented a convicted member of a Portland terrorist cell in a child-custody case. “This somehow has to be some kind of a mistake,” said Mayfield’s former stepmother, Ruth Alexander. “They’re grasping at straws to try and nail people.”
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