An Islamist website "confirmed" on Wednesday the arrest in Pakistan of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a man with joint Syrian and Spanish nationality wanted as a suspected Al-Qaeda militant. On November 3, Pakistani officials said their forces killed an Arab Al-Qaeda suspect and seized another in a shootout. But a top-level intelligence official played down reports that Setmariam, who has reported links to the Madrid and London bombings, had been nabbed. The Internet statement Wednesday said "Sheikh Abu Musab al-Suri was arrested three months ago ... and not recently, as the media have reported, as if it were news."The statement was signed by a previously unknown figure, Abdul al-Tawab al-Shami, and its authenticity could not be verified. On the day of the Pakistani announcement, Spanish judicial authorities said they wanted to question Nasar and that the high court would press for his extradition if he had actually be arrested. The Spanish sources added that there were no "objective elements" linking Nasar to the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, although some newspapers have tagged him as involved. But the US Justice Department said "recent unconfirmed press reports suggest he may have had a role" in the bombings," which killed 191 people in Spain's worst terrorist attack.
Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon charged Nasar in September 2003 with belonging to a Spanish-based Al-Qaeda cell later taken over by fellow Syrian Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas. In September, Yarkas was jailed for 27 years for conspiring to carry out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Media reports have also quoted intelligence officials in Britain as saying Nasar is wanted in connection with the July 7 London bombings, which killed 56 people including four suicide bombers.