Respuesta :
A federal judge yesterday cleared Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield of ties to the Madrid train bombings after the FBI made the stunning admission that it erred when analyzing a copy of fingerprints.
Portland's FBI Special Agent in Charge, Robert Jordan, said the error, based on a "substandard" copy of the prints, will prompt the agency to review its guidelines for making identifications and ask an international panel of experts to analyze what went wrong.
Portland's FBI Special Agent in Charge, Robert Jordan, said the error, based on a "substandard" copy of the prints, will prompt the agency to review its guidelines for making identifications and ask an international panel of experts to analyze what went wrong.
Answer:
Brandon Mayfield is an American lawyer from the Portland area in the state of Oregon. Although he was born an American, he was converted to Islam at a later age.
On May 6, 2004, he was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of involvement in the Al Qaeda bombings in Madrid. The arrest did not happen as a suspect but as a material witness. This method is intended to temporarily hold someone in preparation for a Grand Jury session, but under the Patriot Act its use has been widened to such an extent that someone can actually be detained indefinitely without charge, trial or bail. Moreover, Mayfield was given a gag order (silence obligation) so that he could not even try to prove his innocence.
The basis for all this was that a fingerprint was found on a plastic bag with explosives in Madrid. The FBI claimed it was a perfect print, but it later turned out that it was only a partial print. The digital copy of this resulted in identification with Mayfield's fingerprints in the FBI search system. This was all the more remarkable because the man had not left the US in years - his passport had already expired for some time - although the FBI did not bother to check it. They also failed to verify the identification against the original fingerprint, which was not part of their normal procedure. From the outset, the Madrid police had doubts about the identification of the FBI and ultimately proved Mayfield's innocence by being able to assign the fingerprint to an Algerian. After 17 days in prison, Mayfield was released.
The Mayfield affair raised a number of important questions in the US. First of all, the FBI's motivation for shading Mayfield used, among other things, that he visited a particular mosque where other people considered by the FBI to participate in the prayer took part. The question is whether this is not discrimination based on religion. Furthermore, the digital treatment of fingerprints has proved to be less than watertight and the FBI has for a long time relied entirely on this method and claimed that their identifications would be 100% reliable. The question is whether there are no more people stuck innocently. Finally, the use of the possibility of detaining someone as an important witness in the eyes of many human rights activists is an outright denial of all principles of proper administration of justice.
