A Spanish man suspected of supplying explosives to the Madrid bombers told a court he had tipped police off months before the attacks that some of the Moroccan suspects in the case were looking to buy explosives.

A two-year probe into the Madrid train bombings concludes the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting on their own rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, two senior intelligence officials said.

Police freed a Moroccan hostage and arrested seven suspected members of a kidnapping ring, three of them relatives of a reputed ringleader of the Madrid bombings, the Interior Ministry said today.