By RJ Schinner, 11/30/06
Brandon Mayfield is a lawyer in Portland, Oregon, a father of three children, a former lieutenant in the Army, and converted to Islam when he married his wife, an Egyptian immigrant. After the Madrid bombings in 2004, the FBI erroneously linked fingerprints found at the scene to Mayfield. Spanish authorities raised doubts that the fingerprints were in fact Mayfield’s, but that did not deter the FBI. That Mayfield was the attorney for a terrorism defendant in a child custody case and is a Muslim himself made him a target in the government’s “war on terrorism”.
The New York Times reported that:
Using expanded surveillance powers under the USA Patriot Act, the government wiretapped his conversations, conducted secret searches of his home and his law office and jailed him for two weeks as a material witness in the case before a judge threw out the case against him.
“The days, weeks and months following my arrest,” he said, “were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.”
(“U.S. Will Pay $2 Million to Lawyer Wrongly Jailed“, NY Times, 11/30/06)
After public exposure of this outrageous injustice, the government has now settled a lawsuit filed by Mayfield, awarding him two million dollars and issuing a formal apology. The NY Times reported:
The settlement includes an unusual condition that frees the government from future liability except in one important area: Mr. Mayfield is allowed to continue a lawsuit seeking to overturn parts of the Patriot Act as a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Brandon Mayfield’s horrible ordeal at the hands of “war on terrorism” brings to light the human suffering and injustice caused by arrogating unprecedented and unchecked police state powers to this regime in power. That the Patriot Act, made permanent with the approval of most of Congress, was used to carry out this injustice on Mayfield shows how this kind of treatment is becoming legal and normal inside the United States.
While Mayfield has survived this ordeal and won a settlement from the government, three questions remain:
What would have happened to Mayfield if he were not a US citizen?
How many others are enduring this kind of injustice?
And given that Congress, with either the support or the quiet acceptance of the Democrats, has approved both the Patriot Act and now the Military Commissions Act, what will it take to stop this?