Suspect had sketches of NYC buildings

WASHINGTON – A suspect in the Madrid train bombings last year had a sketch of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, but city Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday that there was no threat to the world’s largest train station.

Kelly said a one-page sketch found in the suspect’s computer was “a basic schematic” of the station’s interior.

“It is not an operational plan,” he said. “It is not something that would indicate an immediate threat to a facility.”

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the sketch was not “specific or technical” and added, “We don’t believe it could have been used for operational plans by a terrorist.”

Kelly said photos and a drawing of a New York City building that he wouldn’t identify also were found in the computer of Mohammed Almallah, who was arrested two weeks after the bombing of four commuter trains in Madrid on March 11.

The attack killed 191 people.

Almallah was released a week after his arrest but is still considered a suspect.

Kelly told CNN later that transportation engineers who studied the sketch believe it depicts Vanderbilt Hall, a waiting room off the main concourse.

Kelly said the sketch is part of the ongoing Madrid investigation, which has landed 24 people in jail.

Spanish police gave U.S. authorities a disk with the Almallah material, though it is unclear when. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a New York radio station, “We’ve known about the data on this computer for a long time.”

Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs city trains, said, “We were made aware of it in December.”

He said the sketch “was not of anything we would consider a sensitive area.”

Tom Kelly would not discuss any action taken in response to the sketch but said the city has been on a heightened state of alert since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.