U.S. Will Pay $2 Million to Lawyer Wrongly Jailed

The federal government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday to an Oregon lawyer wrongly jailed in connection with the 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid, and it issued a formal apology to him and his family. ...The unusual settlement caps a two-and-a-half-year ordeal that saw the lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, go from being a suspected terrorist operative to a symbol, in the eyes of his supporters, of government overzealousness in the war on terrorism.

?The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused? by his mistaken arrest, the government?s apology began. It added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which erroneously linked him to the Madrid bombs through a fingerprinting mistake, had taken steps ?to ensure that what happened to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again.?

At an emotional news conference in Portland announcing the settlement, Mr. Mayfield said he and his wife, an Egyptian immigrant, and their three children still suffered from the scars left by the government?s surveillance of him and his jailing for two weeks in May 2004.

?The horrific pain, torture and humiliation that this has caused myself and my family is hard to put into words,? said Mr. Mayfield, an American-born convert to Islam and a former lieutenant in the Army.

?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.? - nytimes

Does he get two full weeks to chain up and beat the living crap out of the people who were involved in wrongly abusing him? That would be nice in addition to the money. In the big picture, something is broken. Bush has inserted a terror virus into our justice system. It is a loophole, a back door which allows those in power to jail forever and torture anyone. Yet now, with the Democrats in power in congress, we see a little justice for one person. By the way, these are $2 million of your tax dollars being paid out to one person due to Government incompetence which led to his false imprisonment and physical abuse.