Reply #14: Ah... Islam again...This mssg is 4 lawyers defending enemies of the state

[Tinoire]

the man in federal custody is Brandon Mayfield, an attorney who converted to Islam and represented Jeffrey Battle

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/050704dnnatarrest.197cfdb16.html

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The man was identified as Brandon Mayfield, a convert to Islam who is tangentially linked to one of the chief defendants in the so-called “Portland Seven” case—a suspected terror cell in Oregon whose six surviving members pled guilty last year of plotting to fight for the Taliban against U.S. soldiers during the war in Afghanistan.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4918333/

The Portland 7? Again?

Ashcroft must be wet from excitement. They just can't get "aroused" enough from all this demonization.

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Law-enforcement officials today provided few details about the evidence against Mayfield, but said the alleged presence of physical evidence tying the man to the Madrid bombing made it an extremely serious matter. Sources said Mayfield's fingerprints were found on a bag containing bomb material connected to the Spanish attack. But officials said considerable uncertainty remained about Mayfield's role. The lawyer’s previous connection to the Portland Seven was tangential; he had represented the interests of one of the chief defendants, Jeffrey Battle, in a custody matter involving Battle’s 6-year-old child that arose after he and the other suspects were arrested in the fall of 2002.

The Portland Seven case was among the significant—and to some, controversial—cases brought by the Justice Department since September 11. Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed it as a “defining day in America’s war against terrorism,” asserting that the FBI had “neutralized a suspected terrorist cell within our borders.”

Critics later charged that the Justice Department produced no evidence that any of the suspects had engaged in acts of terrorism. But prosecutors did establish that the six men arrested had traveled through China trying unsuccessfully to cross into Pakistan in early October 2001. Their stated goal was to join Taliban forces in Afghanistan to help defend fellow Muslims against U.S. soldiers. (A seventh man was never arrested and prosecutors later said he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan.)


Among the most incriminating evidence in the case were secret tape recordings made by a U.S. informant before the group left for Asia.
On the tapes, Battle, a former Army reservist, expressed his hostility to U.S. interests in Afghanistan and his desire to attack a local Jewish religious school or synagogue with automatic weapons. Battle and another main codefendant, Patrice Lumumba Ford, later pled guilty to conspiracy to levy war against the United States, but both refused to agree to cooperate with federal prosecutors. The remaining four also pled guilty.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4918333/