http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/09/1086460306748.html

Italy arrested an Egyptian man suspected of helping to plan the Madrid train bombings as police across Europe swooped on Islamic militants in coordinated anti-terror raids, officials said last yesterday.

Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, known as "Mohamed the Egyptian", was seized in Milan in a operation that Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said was aimed at a "dangerous group of terrorists close to al-Qaeda" which had been planning more attacks.

Ahmed was one of at least 17 people arrested in coordinated operations in Italy, France, Belgium and Spain.

"He is considered one of the masterminds of March 11," a Spanish Interior Ministry spokesman said, referring to the attacks that killed 191 people in the Spanish capital.

Fifteen of the arrests came in Belgium, and those held there included Jordanians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Moroccans.

"We know them to be part of a terrorist group," said Glenn Audenaert, director of the federal police bureau of Brussels.

A Spanish judicial source said Ahmed was a former Egyptian army explosives expert who gave courses at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

Investigating magistrate Maurizio Romanelli said the intercepted conversations contained "very significant references" to the Madrid attacks.

Ahmed, 32, had lived in Spain before coming to Italy where he was working as a house painter, officials said.

Spanish authorities have linked him to Serhane ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, best known as "The Tunisian", whom they consider the ringleader of the Madrid bombings.

Farkhet, 35, died on April 3 when he and six other prime suspects blew themselves up in a suburban Madrid apartment rather than surrender to police who had them surrounded.

Until the latest raids, 20 people had been formally accused of involvement in the Madrid bombings, of whom 14 are under arrest. At least 20 others have been arrested and cleared.

Investigators believe the bombs were the work of Islamic militants acting in the name of al-Qaeda, which had not previously struck in any western country since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.