A MAN has been arrested in Britain as part of an international police investigation into last year’s Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people.

Moutaz Almallah Dabas, 39, who has Spanish nationality but was born in Syria, was arrested by Scotland Yard anti-terrorist branch and extradition officers in Slough, Berkshire, yesterday morning.

Dabas will appear before Bow Street magistrates in London tomorrow.

A security source said Dabas had been “arrested under a European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish authorities for alleged terrorist offences, in particular involvement in the Madrid bombings”.

A “search and capture warrant” issued by Judge Juan del Olmo alleges that Dabas recruited young Muslims in Spain for Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps. He is accused of using a flat in Madrid for “offering protection and lodging and escorting his recruits abroad”.

In the warrant, Dabas is also accused of links with Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, 34, who was arrested in Milan in June 2004 in connection with the Madrid bombs and has since been extradited to Spain.

The allegation that Dabas recruited young Muslims is a claim the Spanish authorities have also made against his brother Mohannad, who was arrested in Madrid last Friday.

They are alleged to have been helped by Basel Ghalyoun, a Syrian already being held over a suspected role in the Madrid bombings.

The indictment also claims Mohannad’s flat was used for meetings, some of which were attended by a Tunisian called Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet.

Fakhet was one of seven prime suspects for the bombings who killed themselves in a suicide blast on April 3 last year as police closed in.

The brothers have previously been named in an indictment by Judge Baltasar Garzon, Spain’s leading anti-terrorism investigator, at the national court in Madrid after the September 11 attacks in New York in 2001.

So far, a total of 22 people, many of them Moroccan, have been jailed in the investigation into the Madrid bombs. More than 50 others have been held and released but are still considered suspects. Groups linked to Al-Qaeda groups have claimed responsibility for the attack.

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