Hats off to John Ashcroft's Justice Department for illegally arresting Oregonion lawyer Brandon Mayfield, smearing him as a terrorist, holding him for weeks on the basis of extra-judicial "material witness" status (note: no charge necessary for this one), and then having to let him go and apologize when the whole thing turned out to be a mistake.
MAY 26--The FBI apologized yesterday to the Oregon lawyer arrested and jailed in connection with the March 11 Madrid bombings, saying that the agency's identification of a key smudged fingerprint supposedly linking Brandon Mayfield to the Spanish plot was faulty
Whoops. Well it's a good thing this arrest wasn't hyped to the media as a slam-dunk terrorist conviction.
A U.S. counterterrorism official tells Newsweek that the fingerprint was an "absolutely incontrovertible match."
Oh. By "absolutely incontroveritble," I guess they meant, "totally fucking wrong." But it's a joke to pretent that this arrest was based on a fingerprint. The real reason this lawyer was arrested?
Mayfield married an Egyptian woman, converted to Islam 16 years ago and was active in a local Oregon mosque whose members had openly protested government antiterror policies. But it was another thing that leapt out at investigators: in 2002, Mayfield had volunteered to provide legal help for Jeffrey Battle, one of the ringleaders of the Portland Seven -- a group of local jihadists who had flown to Asia after 9/11 in an unsuccessful effort to fight with the Taliban.
A brief list of things in that paragraph that are not crimes. 1) Converting to Islam. 2)Attending mosque. 3) Protesting government "antiterror" (read: antiterror/squash domestic opposition) policies. 4) Offering defense counsel to other people accused of crimes. This article omits the fact that Mayfield was representing Battle on an un-related child-custody case. Of course, THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT. The accused get legal representation in this country, or at least they used to, NO MATTER WHAT THE ACCUSATION. I don't care if this guy was defending Manson, legal representation is not a crime. Unless, of course, you're this asshole.
If that print had matched with some little old lady in Peoria, that would be one thing," says a U.S. official. "But what are the odds it would be somebody with this background?"
What background??? Some jumpy FBI agents were monitoring this guy because, according to his brother, Mayfield was "less than super-happy with the policies of the Bush administration," and, a Muslim. So now my questions are these: How many other people have been detained on bogus "material witness" orders? Why do Muslims need to appear super-patriotic to avoid illegal government monitoring and/or illegal search and seizure? What is being done to restore some of the legal safeguards stripped away post-911 and finally, when is this country going to wake the fuck up and demand John Ashcroft's resignation as well as that of the simian boy-king who keeps him and others like him employed????
Here's the affadavit which led to Mayfield's arrest
Justin Raimondo on why Jack Ashcroft needs to go
An un-named "counter-terrorism official" crowing about an "absolutely incontrovertible match"
Posted by mike at May 30, 2004 07:55 PMTo be sure, it's not so much the investigation I'm complaining about as the media circus that the justice department organizes around cases like this. The government has an extremely big megaphone when it comes to these cases and it does everything in its power to stack the deck. Hence, people like you and me end up parroting lines like "he called the leader of a terrorist organization." Did he? Who? We don't know. But you throw all of that against the wall, hope enough sticks, and then top it off with "WE HAVE HIS FINGERPRINTS!" That's meant to seal the deal in the collective public mind. It usually works too. Keep in mind: None of these pronouncements were legal arguments. They were PR arguments. And fabricated PR arguments at that. This is the justice system making a mistake. This is the marketing/public relations system making a mistake.
Another case in point: yesterday's justice department press conference on Jose Padilla.
"That answer [to Orin Hatch's request for information vis a vis Jose Padilla], which was provided to Sen. Hatch earlier today, and also provided to Padilla's lawyers, and to our own Department of Justice lawyers handling his case in court, enables us for the first time to tell the full story of Jose Padilla. It will allow the American people to understand the threat he posed, and also understand that the president's decision was and continues to be essential to the protection of the American people."
"Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor who has followed the Padilla case, said he believes the government is trying to influence Supreme Court justices who are now weighing Padilla's challenge to his ‘enemy combatant’ status.
"Greenberger said he found the government's public report on Padilla ‘to be highly unusual, and, I'm sorry to say, I come away with no other conclusion than it was designed to have some kind of extra-judicial influence on the Supreme Court decision.’"
Clearly. More extra-judicial propaganda, with a side-order of shilling for the administration to boot. So apparently the guy was planning to blow up apartment bulidings with natural gas now. Uh-huh. His lawyers got this information an hour before the press conference. Normally they would have it, except there is no trial, and hence no charges. Just the government's say so.
Finally, John Ashcroft needs to be held accountable for the actions of his own department. He has his hand in all of these big cases.