Madrid bomb suspect is arrested

SPANISH police yesterday arrested a north African man who is suspected of involvement in the train bombings that killed almost 200 people in Madrid last month.

The Spanish interior ministry named the man, detained in the early hours of Tuesday, as Mohamed Bouharrat, 24.

He was one of six people for whom international arrest warrants were issued on Monday as part of investigations into the bombings.

The interior ministry, which did not give Bouharrat's nationality, said he was detained in the Madrid suburb of Leganes, where a group of seven suspects blew themselves up in an apartment on April 3.

The five other people named in Monday's arrest warrants were Said Berraj, Mohamed Afalah, Mohamed Belhadj, Abdelmajid Bouchar and Hicham Ahmidan. Berraj, a Moroccan national, was already the subject of an arrest warrant dated March 31.

Meanwhile, two more men arrested in anti-terror raids across Britain have been freed, police said.

The men were among 10 people arrested in Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands on Monday last week.

Only five are still in custody on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism after a woman and two men were released last weekend.

A Greater Manchester Police spokeswoman said that while the pair freed last night were no longer wanted on terrorism offences, they were on police bail on other matters.

All 10 arrested last Monday were described by police as north African and Iraqi Kurdish in origin.