Italian police said Friday they have arrested Siyar Khan an affiliate of al-Qaeda who participated in a deadly bombing attack in Pakistan six years ago and gave shelter to a fellow terrorist planning to blow himself up in Rome.

The Pakistani man was apprehended at Rome‘s Fiumicino airport on Thursday after flying in from Islamabad, a statement said.

He is accused of having participated in the October 29, 2009 car bombing of a market for women in Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan, which killed 137 and took place while then US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton was visiting the country.

Police said he also gave shelter - first in Rome, later in the Sardinian town of Olbia - to a man who was plotting a suicide attack in the Italian capital. The attack never took place.

The detention of Siyar came two months after police on the island of Sardinia issued 18 arrest warrants as part of an operation against what they described as an Islamist terror cell led by two former bodyguards of Osama bin Laden.

The cell allegedly operated out of Olbia, a Sardinian town which has a small, long-standing Pakistani community.


At the time, Italian prosecutors said they also found evidence of preparations for a terrorist attack. They said a would-be suicide bomber landed in Fiumicino in March 2010, but left some time after because his accomplices realized he was under surveillance.