SEATTLE — FBI fingerprint experts identified Portland, Ore., lawyer Brandon Mayfield as a suspect in the Madrid train bombings six days after the attacks, and investigated him even though Spanish police raised early doubts about a fingerprint match, according to court documents unsealed this week.
A federal investigator traveled to Madrid in April to try to convince police there that a print found on a bag of detonators was Mayfield's. U.S. officials afterward said they believed the Spanish were "satisfied with the FBI laboratory's identification," the affidavit said.
U.S. District Judge Robert Jones on Monday dismissed the case against Mayfield and ordered that all fingerprint evidence be preserved for the purposes of investigating the FBI's handling of the case.
Mayfield, 37, a Muslim convert, was arrested May 6 as a material witness and held until Spanish police confirmed two weeks later that the print belonged to an Algerian man.
On Tuesday, Robert Jordan, FBI special agent in charge in Portland, said he planned to meet with Mayfield to apologize. The case was an embarrassment to the FBI, which long has considered itself the gold standard when it comes to fingerprint analysis. The FBI said in a statement that it was asking "an international panel of fingerprint experts" to review the case.
In the nine-page affidavit, filed by prosecutors to obtain the material-witness warrant against Mayfield, FBI agent Richard Werder described how a lone fingerprint had led to the Portland lawyer.
Spanish police obtained the evidence from a blue plastic bag found in a stolen van near Madrid just after the March 11 explosions that killed 191 people and wounded 2,000 others. Madrid gave the FBI a copy of the print March 17.
Federal investigators came up with 20 possible matches. Terry Green, an FBI senior fingerprint examiner, narrowed it down to Mayfield, a former Army lieutenant whose prints were part of his military record. Green considered the match "to be 100% identification," the affidavit said. Green's conclusion was backed by three other fingerprint experts.
Spanish police, however, had expressed doubt about the match as early as mid-April, according to the affidavit. But Werder said the April 21 meeting with Spanish national police ended with all parties agreeing that the FBI finding was correct.
