RUSSIAN police have arrested a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner on suspicion of taking part in this month’s bloody attack on the southern Russian spa town of Nalchik.

Rasul Kudayev, who was returned to Russia in February last year, was detained on Sunday at his home in Nalchik, according to his mother and his lawyer.

Interfax said that he was arrested after police questioned participants in the October 13 raid on Nalchik, the capital of the republic of Kabardino-Balkariya, in which at least 128 people were killed. It said that Mr Kudayev, 24, was suspected of taking part in an attack on a traffic police post in the village of Khasanye, near Nalchik.

His mother, Fatima, denied that her son had been involved with the militants who carried out the attack. She said: “He’s been at home the whole time since he was released. We never go to see people and nobody comes to see us. He is very sick.”

Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer for Mr Kudayev, said that the allegations were based on a groundless tip-off. He added: “Some secret informant allegedly called to say he had a stash of weapons at his house. The search revealed this to be false, but they still took him in.”

Mr Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, a British charity, is helping the seven Russian Guantanamo prisoners to sue the US Government over their treatment.

If Mr Kudayev’s alleged role in the attacks is not proven, his arrest will be seen as an example of how the Russian authorities’ heavy-handed tactics are alienating people across the North Caucasus, analysts said. And if it is proven, it will be an embarrassment for Russian authorities as they pushed hard for his return from Guantanamo Bay. Mr Kudayev was one of eight Russian citizens arrested by US troops as “enemy combatants” in Afghanistan in 2001 and taken to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Russian prosecutors visited in 2002 and demanded that the so-called “Russian Talibs” be extradited. In February last year, seven were handed back to Russia, where they were charged with illegal crossing of a state border, mercenary activities and participation in a criminal gang. The charges were dropped and the men released in June last year.

Channel One, the state-controlled television station, reported that they had been sold to the US by the Taleban. Mr Kudayev said in the report that he had studied Islam in Saudi Arabia before joining the Taleban. He complained about his treatment at Guantanamo. “They were told not to touch us below the waist and not to take our Korans,” he said. “But they searched us very rudely. When they did not find anything, I spat in their faces. They took me to the cell, sprayed me with gas and beat me.”

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