Image copyright Family handout/PA/Met Police Image caption Abdul Hadi Arwani was found with gunshot wounds in a car in Wembley

A second man has been arrested and a mosque is being searched after a Syrian-born preacher was found shot dead in his car in north-west London.

Abdul Hadi Arwani, 48, was found dead on 7 April in Wembley. He was believed to be a critic of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

Scotland Yard said a 61-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.

Earlier Leslie Cooper, 36, appeared in court charged with Mr Arwani's murder.

At Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court Mr Cooper, of Nightingale Road, Brent, was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey by Thursday.

As part of the ongoing investigation, officers said they were searching a number of addresses including the mosque at the An Noor Cultural and Community Centre in west London where Mr Arwani had been an imam.

Image caption Police were called to The Paddocks, in Wembley, north-west London, on 7 April

Mr Arwani, who was a British national, was found with bullet injuries to his chest in a parked car at the junction of Greenhill and The Paddocks.

The father of six had been an imam at the An Noor mosque in Acton, west London, from 2005 to 2011, and is believed to have attended protests against the Assad regime outside the Syrian embassy in London in 2012.

In 1982, he claimed he was forced to flee Syria after being sentenced to death for photographing damage in his home city of Hama following government suppression of a rebellion.