US Edition Zabi uk-Taifi, from Taif in Saudi Arabia, was seized with six others in a raid by Pakistan intelligence officers and local forces on a village just outside Peshawar in the Khyber Agency.
They were arrested on Wednesday at the home of a local Taliban militant, known as Bakhshi, where all seven had been staying for the last three months, according to Pakistani intelligence sources.
The raid is reported to have been monitored from a nearby car by Western intelligence agents and from the air by US drones.
It is believed that the men had been using the house as their command base for a series of attacks on Nato convoys which cut off the Khyber Pass supply route to Afghanistan.
Earlier this week, General David Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, announced an agreement for new supply routes through Russia and the Central Asian republics following the Khyber Pass attacks.
The al-Qaeda cell is believed to have carried out a number of successful raids on November and December, including one in which more than 160 Nato containers were burned and another in which a depot for Nato lorries on the outskirts of Peshawar was destroyed.
Pakistani intelligence sources said on Wednesday that Taifi was suspected of having links to the 2005 London bus and underground bombings that killed 52 people. But they did not specify the nature of his suspected involvement and he has never previously been named as a suspect either by the British or Pakistani authorities.