WASHINGTON – Another arrest in a high-profile crime, another pullback by the FBI.
The release of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield after the FBI acknowledged it had mistakenly matched his fingerprint to one found near the scene of the deadly Madrid train bombings is the latest illustration of what critics say is a flawed U.S. anti-terror policy that threatens Americans’ civil liberties and privacy.
“It underscores the dangers of this kind of policy of arrest first, ask questions later,” David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and critic of post-Sept. 11 law enforcement tactics, said Tuesday.
The FBI made a rare apology to Mayfield on Monday night, after he was cleared of any connection to the March 11 bombings that killed 191 people and injured more than 2,000. FBI officials said Tuesday they would have no further comment on the case.
Now, the agency is reviewing how it handles fingerprints, especially in cases such as the one involving Mayfield where forensic experts must rely on digital images, rather than original evidence. For the review, an international panel of experts will examine what happened in the Mayfield case.
This is not the first time the FBI has fingered an innocent person, to its embarrassment. Richard Jewell was wrongly accused in the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. And nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was freed in 2000 after a criminal case alleging he stole secrets from the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico fell apart. President Clinton apologized to Lee for that foul-up.
To critics of government antiterrorism tactics, Mayfield’s arrest is an example of a problem that extends beyond flawed fingerprint examination techniques. They say it shows that the government is far too willing to detain people, sometimes for weeks or longer, with little criminal evidence.
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