(AFP) – Jun 6, 2008

THE HAGUE (AFP) — Dutch police have arrested a 26-year-old Pakistani man sought in Spain on terrorism charges, the prosecution service of The Netherlands said on Friday.

Aqueel Ur Rehman Abbasi was arrested Thursday "in his prison cell in Vught where he was being held by the immigration and naturalisation services, at the request of the Spanish authorities," Amsterdam prosecution spokesman Frank Wattimena told AFP.

"The Spanish authorities have issued a European arrest warrant for him, and accused him of being a member of a terrorist organisation and of taking part in the planning of terrorist attacks," he added.

On Thursday, a Spanish judge filed terrorism charges against 11 South Asians, mostly Pakistanis, suspected of planning suicide attacks in Barcelona and elsewhere in Europe.

Among them was Abbasi, first arrested in March by Dutch police, who let him go for lack of evidence.

He was subsequently taken into custody by immigration authorities for being in the country illegally and held pending his expulsion.

Ten of those charged Thursday had been arrested in Barcelona, north-eastern Spain, in January in raids during which police said they found bomb-making equipment.

All 11 were charged with belonging to a terrorist group, and eight with additional counts of possessing explosives.

The cell is suspected of planning suicide bombings in the Barcelona metro and other European cities.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in February that the cell was linked to Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, suspected by officials in Islamabad of involvement in the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Wattimena said Abbasi would meet prosecutors in Amsterdam later on Friday.

"If he agrees to be extradited, that should take 10 days. If he does not accept, the request for Spanish extradition will have to be submitted to a judge, who will have two months to decide."

Spanish authorities have stepped up operations against Islamist radicals since the March 11, 2004 Al-Qaeda-inspired train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded 1,800 in the country's worst terror attack.

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