ROME, 9 June 2004 — Italy yesterday claimed to have snared one of the “masterminds” of the March 11 Madrid train bombings in a counterterrorism operation that also involved police forces in Spain and Belgium.

Belgian police said they had detained a total of 15 people acting on a tip-off from Italian anti-terrorist counterparts, who earlier had arrested three suspects in overnight raids in Milan.

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu described one suspect held in Italy as one of the authors of the March 11 bombings in Madrid which killed nearly 200 people and injured more than a thousand.

Counterterrorism officials in Madrid concurred, identifying the main suspect as Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, adding he was “one of the masterminds, one of the organizers of the attacks”.

Pisanu asserted Ahmed was “preparing other attacks” when arrested, but gave no further details.

Italy’s Corriere della Sera said investigating magistrates authorized the capture of Ahmed, known as “Mohammed the Egyptian”, on Monday after weeks of police surveillance.

One of the other two suspects arrested was the person who rented the Milan apartment in which Ahmed was living.

Meanwhile, Belgian prosecutor Daniel Bernard said the 15 arrested in his country were all foreigners, including Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans and Egyptians.

But Bernard drew no immediate link between the arrests and the Madrid bombings, saying only that Belgian police were acting on a tip-off from Italy in an operation that also involved Spain.

He said he had been informed by Italian authorities that the men were “implicated in the preparation of an attack, probably abroad”.

Though he described suspicions about a planned attack abroad as real, “we don’t have any element to say in what country or on what target”.

Italy has been on alert for attacks by extremists since the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people in the worst terror attack in Europe since the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Italian prosecutors have long claimed that Milan is the center of a logistical operation linking extremists in several European countries, and providing young recruits for suicide bombing missions against coalition forces in Iraq.

Spain’s Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said investigations were continuing in Italy, Belgium and Spain.

His Italian counterpart Pisanu said in a statement Italy had snared one of the key figures behind the Madrid bombings.

“One of the three arrested in Italy, a character of notable ideological and operational importance, is probably one of the principal authors of the Madrid bombings and was preparing other attacks”.

The minister described the operation as being “of very great importance, which for the moment has blocked a dangerous terrorist group gravitating toward Al-Qaeda”.