LONDON, Oct 24: The British police arrested here on Tuesday an Egyptian man on suspicion of masterminding terrorist acts and supplying key documents to assist assassins in the murder of key Afghan opposition leader Ahmad Shah Masood.

Yasser al-Siri, 38, was held following a raid on a house in London. He is said to have been found guilty of involvement in a bomb attack on the Egyptian prime minister in 1993 in which a five-year-old girl was killed.

He was sentenced to death in absentia.

Al-Siri is believed to have supplied the key document to assist assassins in the murder of Ahmad Shah Masood just two days before the Sept 11 attacks on the US.

Sources said the hitmen, carrying stolen Belgian passports, entered Afghanistan posing as journalists after securing visas with a letter of introduction from al-Siri.

The men went to the Afghan embassy in London using the names Karim Touzani, 34, and Kacem Bakkali, 28, and then went to the Pakistan High Commission. There they applied as journalists for visas to enter Pakistan.

A police source described the arrest of al-Siri as “significant” and said he was being questioned for a “whole range of suspected terrorist incidents”.