MADRID BOMBINGS Lawyer recalls his ordeal
Mistaken identification of a fingerprint had implicated Brandon Mayfield.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- For the first time since his arrest, Brandon Mayfield spoke of the humiliation he underwent as he sat for two weeks in jail, falsely suspected of being involved in the Spain terrorist attacks.
"I'm just now starting to not shake," said the 37-year-old Portland attorney. "My blood pressure has -- you know -- risen. My pulse has risen. My heart hurts."
Mayfield described Monday how he was handcuffed and shackled and made to stay in the same jail as men awaiting arraignment on murder charges. In jail, a prison guard told him: "You should watch your back."
The attorney was taken away by FBI agents May 6 when federal officials incorrectly matched his fingerprint to one found on a bag of detonators in a train station near Madrid.
On Monday, the case against Mayfield was dropped and the FBI apologized.
Initially, Mayfield was held in solitary confinement -- alone, save for a one-hour recess each day. Then he was moved to the jail's mental ward, said attorney Tom Nelson, who represented him in the first day after his arrest.
Recognized by others
There, inmates shared a common room with a TV. They began to recognize him after Mayfield's picture flickered on the nightly news, juxtaposed with images of the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others.
"The real implication is that other inmates might try to hurt him because they thought he was a terrorist," Nelson said.
At his home in Aloha, a Portland suburb, TV crews camped outside the family's white clapboard home. Inside, the waiting game was especially trying on Mayfield's three children.
"I dreamt about his release," said 15-year-old Shane Mayfield, the attorney's eldest son, the day after his father was freed last week. The Mayfields' other children are Sharia, 12, and Samir, 10.
"Two weeks might not seem like a long time to a lot of people -- but when you don't know what's happening, it is," said Mona Mayfield, his wife.
According to court documents unsealed Monday, FBI agents began their surveillance of Mayfield two weeks after the March 11 attacks in the Spanish capital.
Under a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act, agents entered his home -- but mistakenly locked and bolted the door on their way out. The family uses only the lock below the bolt, and they became suspicious.
Mayfield called 911 after he found the door bolted a second time, as well as noticing a man's footprint on the rug that matched no one in the family.
After Mayfield's arrest, FBI agents took the attorney's computers, modem, safe deposit key, assorted papers, copies of the Koran and "Spanish documents" -- later determined to be his son's Spanish homework.
"It was humiliating," Mayfield said. "This whole process has been a harrowing ordeal. It shouldn't happen to anybody."