AN AMERICAN CONNECTION

摘要

Hours after four rail-way bombs exploded in Madrid on March 11, killing 191 people, Spanish investigators got a big break. Early that morning, witnesses had seen three men in ski masks exiting a white van 20 miles from the blast. Inside the vehicle police found detonators, a stick of dynamite and a cassette tape of Qur'anic verses, the first sign that the bombing was the work of Islamic militants. But there was another piece of evidence in the van that Spanish authorities did not reveal: on a plastic bag containing bomb materials, investigators found a "perfectly formed" fingerprint they couldn't identify, a Spanish official told NEWSWEEK. Spanish police ran the print through their database of criminal suspects, but came up empty. So they turned to other countries, including the United States, for help. When the FBI ran the print through its archive, the computer unexpectedly logged a hit: the mystery print, U.S. authorities say, belonged to Brandon Mayfield, a small-time lawyer who lived in Portland, Ore. Mayfield had been fingerprinted years earlier, when he served in the U.S. Army.