Paul E. Ester's Flogger

The FBI apologized to Brandon Mayfield on Monday, saying it had erroneously identified his fingerprint on a bag of detonators found near the site of the deadly March 11 terror attack in Madrid, Spain.

Mayfield, a Portland area lawyer and Muslim convert, was cleared of any connection to the terror attack after a pair of agents traveled over the weekend to Madrid to examine the fingerprint and concluded hours later that it was not Mayfield’s…. Rest of Article

May 25, 2004US authorities have dropped all action against a lawyer detained in connection with the Madrid train bombings, admitting he was the victim of a humiliating identification error.US federal Judge Robert Jones dismissed the “material witness” proceedings against American attorney Brandon Mayfield, 37, four days after he was released from a two-week stint behind bars in Portland in the north-western state of Oregon.”Due to the misidentification by the FBI of a fingerprint, the court orders the material witness proceeding dismissed,” the judge wrote in a terse document…. Rest of Article

- On March 17, the Spanish National Police provided the FBI with photographic images of latent fingerprints that were recovered from the plastic bag containing the detonators in the March 11 bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured 2,000 others.

- The FBI lab in Quantico, Va., used the Automated Fingerprint Identification System to search for possible matches to the fingerprints and one was linked to Mayfield.


- Senior FBI fingerprint examiner Terry Green found a potential match to two fingerprint cards for Mayfield, one from a burglary arrest in Wichita, Kan., on Dec. 22, 1984, and a second from the Army. Both cards were compared to the print found in Madrid and had “in excess” of 15 points of identification.

- Supervisory FBI fingerprint specialist Michael Wieners and fingerprint examiner John T. Massey, a retired FBI examiner with 30 years of experience, verified the identification.


- “I have been advised that the FBI lab stands by their conclusion of a 100 percent positive identification,” Werder said in the affidavit.


- The affidavit notes that Mayfield’s wife, Mona, was born in Egypt, and that Mayfield represented Jeffrey Leon Battle in a child custody case. Battle later was among a group of Portland men who pleaded guilty to conspiring to help al-Qaida and the Taliban fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan.


- The affidavit also notes one phone call between Mona Mayfield and Pete Seda, also known as Perouz Sedaghaty, the director of the U.S. office of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Ashland. The Bush administration has designated the foundation as a terrorist organization.

- The affidavit notes Mayfield had been observed driving to the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton, and that he advertised his law practice in a business directory administered by Jerusalem Enterprises Inc., whose registered agent is Farid Adlouni, linked to Wadih El Hage, the former personal secretary of Osama Bin Laden. The document said Adlouni described the directory as a “Muslim” yellow pages.

- The affidavit states there is no record of any foreign travel by Mayfield but concludes: “Since no record of travel or travel documents have been found in the name of Brandon Bieri Mayfield, it is believed that Mayfield may have traveled under a false or fictitious name, with false or fictitious documents.”

But the affidavit lists no evidence or testimony indicating any false documents or any travel…. wrong on every count?

Must stop clicking… Rest of Article

Investigations continue in the case of a group of Colombian parmailitaries captured by Venezuelan authorities on Sunday at a farm in the outskirts of Caracas. According to testimony by some of the detainees, the group was training in preparation for attacks on Venezuelan military bases and for a coup d’etat against the government of President Hugo Chavez…. Rest of Article


“We have struck a blow to the kidneyÊof coup-plotters, destabilizers, and terrorists,” Chavez said.

The U.S. government concocted a brilliant plan a few years ago: Why not give Internet surfers in China and Iran the ability to bypass their nations’ notoriously restrictive blocks on Web sites?

Soon afterward, the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) invented a way to let people in China and Iran easily route around censorship by using a U.S.-based service to view banned sites such as BBC News, MIT and Amnesty International.

But an independent report released Monday reveals that the U.S. government also censors what Chinese and Iranian citizens can see online. Technology used by the IBB, which puts out the Voice of America broadcasts, prevents them from visiting Web addresses that include a peculiar list of verboten keywords. The list includes “ass” (which inadvertently bans usembassy.state.gov), “breast” (breastcancer.com), “hot” (hotmail.com and hotels.com), “pic” (epic.noaa.gov) and “teen” (teens.drugabuse.gov)…. Rest of Article

“If human beings thought their future had been dependent upon businesses, they would then vote in favor of business.”… Rest of Article

The agreement proceeded despite the deaths of four U.S. troops Friday in the volatile region west of Baghdad. Two Marines were killed in a car bombing near Fallujah and two sailors died in another incident in the same province.

Some 1,360 Iraqis have also died, according to a count by The Associated Press – more than in any month since Saddam’s fall.

By Saturday, all 700 Marines of the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment had pulled out of the industrial zone, their main forward base inside Fallujah.


With the siege apparently over, scores of Iraqis gathered in the streets Saturday morning, some flashing “V” for victory signs and raising the Iraqi flag. Motorists drove through the streets, shouting “Islam, it’s your day!” and “We redeem Islam with our blood!”

Malik Khalif, who fled the city during the fighting, looked at the remains of his destroyed house. “I don’t mind losing and sacrificing my life or my properties for the sake of the honorable resistance of Fallujah,” he said…. Rest of Article