PORTLAND, May 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – After the FBI apologized for a "misidentification" that led to his arrest over the Madrid blasts, an American Muslim lawyer demanded investigations into his two-week detention.

Brandon Mayfield's attorneys have filed papers with a federal judge in Portland to initiate two investigations into the FBI's probe, the Associated Press said Tuesday, May 26.

One line of inquiry addresses how the FBI erroneously linked Mayfield's fingerprint to the deadly train bombings in Madrid and the other probes why government officials leaked information about his arrest to the media.

The attorneys said they seek a thorough airing of the FBI's internal forensic work and behind-the-scenes maneuvering to get the story out in the national press.

They also want an answer to whether their client's Muslim affiliations influenced FBI investigators.

"I think we all as citizens of this country need an answer to that question," said Mayfield's attorney, Steven Wax. "And we need an answer from an independent entity."

At a press conference Monday, May 24, Robert Jordan, the FBI agent in charge of the Oregon office, apologized to Mayfield and his family for the hardships his detention has caused.

"We are not investigating Brandon Mayfield at this point," Jordan said.

Mayfield was held under the 1984 material witness law after Spanish authorities and the FBI had thought that a single fingerprint on a bag with detonators found near a Madrid train station matched his print.

Singled Out

The Federal District Court said Monday the 37-year-old Muslim lawyer "was the victim of a misidentification by the FBI".

However, Mayfield and his lawyers did not agree with this argument, adding that the affidavit for his arrest warrant included such details as his occasional attendance at a local mosque.

"I am a Muslim, an American, and an ex-officer of the U.S. military," Mayfield told a press conference Monday.

"I believe I was singled out and discriminated against, I feel as a Muslim," he charged, regretting the time he spent behind bars as "humiliating" and "embarrassing".

The lawyer, surrounded by his wife and three children, said people held under the material witness act should not be thrown in with convicted criminals awaiting sentencing and people arrested for probable cause of committing crimes.

"During my incarceration I was often manacled and chained," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Mayfield declined to say if FBI agents became physical with him when he was detained.

"People should wake up. We need to start protecting our civil liberties," he stressed, blasting the Patriot Act.

The "fiasco has blown my (law) practice completely apart," Mayfield said, because of negative publicity and the fact that agents had access to confidential legal files in his single practitioner office.

Mayfield expressed concern about others "languishing away" under the material witness law, asserting this "shouldn't happen to anybody."

His lawyer Wax said an FBI computer likely returned a number of possible fingerprint matches, and that his client could have been singled out because he is Muslim.

"It's a major civil rights issue," AP quoted him as saying.

Wax said Mayfield believes he was also subjected to "sneak and peak" searches where agents break into a home but are under no obligation to tell the owner.

The incident came a few months after the FBI dropped all charges against a Muslim U.S. Army chaplain after less than one-year detention allegedly for possessing classified documents about the detainees in Guantanmo.

The chaplain then said the case against him was "politically-motivated".

A May report released by the U.S. Senate Office Of Research said the U.S. Muslim community has taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In its ninth annual Muslim civil rights report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) documented an unprecedented increase of 70 percent of anti-Muslim violence over the previous year.