Police in Spain have arrested a suspected member of al-Qaida's North African offshoot, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

The 37-year-old Moroccan man, Abdellatif Aoulad Chiba, was arrested Wednesday in the southern Spanish coastal town of La Linea de la Concepcion. He is suspected of running an Internet site that sought to recruit members to carry out attacks and provide training materials and propaganda.

The website, which is based in Spain but was not named, was described as a jihadist forum with radical content and manuals aimed at encouraging terrorist acts. Police became suspicious and started an investigation after an increase in traffic on the website.

Officials say Chiba had previously been expelled from Jordan for suspected terror-related activities, but gave no other details.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb is an offshoot of al-Qaida that sprang from an Algerian insurgency movement and is suspected in a number of suicide bomb attacks and ambushes in Algeria.