SPAIN: An American lawyer arrested in the United States was being held as a suspect in the Madrid train bombings after investigators found a fingerprint on a bag linked to the bombers, Spanish police sources said.
Investigators found the bag containing detonators in a van outside a station where the bombers were believed to have boarded trains before the March 11th attacks.
When no match for the single fingerprint was found in Spain, police distributed it abroad, including to the FBI.
Mr Brandon Mayfield, a convert to Islam who married an Egyptian woman, would be the first American implicated in the case. US officials have yet to confirm the arrest, which was reported by Mr Mayfield's brother and Spanish officials after Newsweek magazine broke the story.
Spanish police sources said the FBI had found more evidence in the fingerprint than had the investigators in Spain. It discovered 15 points of similarity between the fingerprint on the bag and Mr Mayfield's corresponding finger, but police in Spain found only eight points of similarity.