AN ISLAMIC militant implicated in the Madrid train bombings and an alleged plot to attack Grand Central Station in New York is being hunted by police in London.

Sketches of the station were found at a gang hideout in Madrid soon after the March 11 bombing last year of four trains that killed 191 commuters but, to the dismay of US security agencies, Spanish police did not detect the plot for nine months. Several key members of that al-Qaeda cell escaped.

The man being sought by Scotland Yard is Moutaz Almallah, who was born in Syria and is believed to have fled to London. His brother, Mouhannad, was given bail while awaiting trial in Madrid accused of sheltering some of the bombers and financing the operation.

The CIA wants to know why it took so long for the Spanish authorities to detect the apparent plot to kill thousands at New York’s busiest station, said to have been on a computer disk found in Mouhannad’s Almallah’s property in a rundown area of the capital.

The coded blueprints are understood to include US train timetables, maps of platforms and access routes used daily by thousands of commuters.

Mouhannad Almallah, 41, had already been questioned about his links to the al-Qaeda cell in Spain, the September 11 plot in the US and a series of suicide attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 which killed 45. The FBI and CIA are astounded that he is not in custody.

Investigators found that the Almallah brothers were key figures in a gang of Islamic criminals who were financing Madrid’s terror groups by drug- dealing, robbery and fraud.

As the first anniversary of the Madrid bombings approaches, Spain’s security agencies face a huge shake-up after a parliamentary investigation revealed serious incompetence.

After months of often stormy and acrimonious argument, the Parliamentary Commission has drafted a list of 100 measures to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism.

They include forcing rival security forces, especially the national police and the civil guard, to share their information. The central units of the police, civil guard and secret service are to triple their staff, and more Arabic translators will be recruited.

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