Family: Bomb Suspect Never Went to Spain

[AP / RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer]

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The first American arrested in the
deadly train bombing in Madrid is a former Army lieutenant and a
convert to Islam who lives in a nondescript suburban home and
faithfully attends a nearby mosque. Family members say Brandon
Mayfield 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.
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.
Mayfield, 37, 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
United States by helping al-Qaida and the former Taliban rulers of
Afghanistan.
Mayfield was born in Oregon and grew up in Halstead, Kan., a
small farming town about 30 miles northwest of Wichita. He joined
the Army right out of high school and was stationed in Germany among
other places. He earned a law degree several years later 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."
Mayfield met his wife, Mona, while stationed near Tacoma,
Wash., at Fort Lewis. Records from Washoe County, Nev., show the two
were married in 1998. Mayfield converted to Islam after marriage,
Alexander said.
Mayfield comes from a family of non-church-goers, Alexander
said. "When they started having children, he thought they should
have some religion to have the family focus on," she said.
Leaders at the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton, Ore., said he
would show up regularly for prayer on Fridays, and that he helped
congregants who needed legal advice.
Mayfield lost one of his biological brothers to leukemia,
Alexander said, while another still lives in Halstead, and teaches
art at a public school.
Mayfield's paternal grandmother, Lydia Mayfield, was
well-known in Hutchinson for her plain-spokenness, Ruth Alexander
said, and was once investigated by the FBI for a letter to the
editor published in the local newspaper in which she threatened the
president.
Records show Mayfield spent a single semester at Lewis &
Clark law school in Portland, but that he received his degree from
Washburn University in Kansas, according to Dena Anson, the director
of university relations at the Kansas school. He passed the Oregon
bar in 2000.
Neighbors said the Mayfields moved into a repossessed home
in Aloha, Ore., fixed it up and then held a dinner party. The
Mayfields had so little furniture then, neighbor Arlene Witt
recalled, that she and her husband sat on the couch and Brandon and
Mona Mayfield sat on the floor.
Their three children -- Shane, Sharia, and Samir -- are 15, 12
and 10.
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Associated Press writer Roxana Hegeman reported to this
report from Halstead, Kan.

[AP / RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer]