Eyewitness: Terror suspects in court

By Andy Tighe BBC home affairs correspondent

The eight men were brought in convoy across London, flanked by police vans and with a helicopter circling overhead.

Police escort the suspects to Belmarsh magistrates' court

The high security courts and prison complex at Belmarsh in the south-east of the city is a formidable place - a vast edifice of concrete, barbed wire and closed circuit television cameras.

Today there were armed police patrolling the grounds as dozens of journalists and film crews from around the world gathered on the small patch of grass in front of the main building.

Inside, in the modern, airy magistrates court, lawyers and reporters took their places as the day's proceedings began.

Gun charge

At first there were delays because some of the defendants had still not had an opportunity to consult their solicitors.

With the district judge Timothy Workman eager to get started quickly as possible with whoever was ready, it was soon clear that the men were not going to appear in the dock at the same time.

First up was a man arrested at the same time as the other eight, but only charged with the lesser offence of possessing an illegal firearm.

He was remanded on bail until next month.

'No reaction'

Then, after another wait, the first of the eight men facing conspiracy charges was brought into the dock.

At Belmarsh, this is a large area at the back of the court, completely separated from the rest of the room by a floor-to-ceiling glass panel.

Above is the public gallery, accessed by a separate staircase and from which it is only possible to see the main body of the court, not the dock.

Wearing a white sweatshirt and grey jogging pants, Abdul Aziz Jalil stood silently beside police officers and security guards as he was asked to confirm his date of birth and his name.

The charges against him were then read out and the prosecutor explained why she thought he should be remanded in custody rather than given bail until the date of his trial. Within a few minutes he was duly led back to the cells below.

Individually or in small groups the rest of the men were eventually brought into court.

None of them gave any reaction, nor were they expected to: this is simply the initial stage in the legal process, when a defendant's alleged crimes are laid before a judge for the first time. None of the men's lawyers requested bail.

'Frustration'

Indeed, the limits upon what can be said at these hearings are considerable - so as not to prejudice a jury that might hear the case in the future.

And such are the current sensitivities around high-profile defendants that there was no surprise today when the prosecutor obtained an order preventing the publication of any photograph or drawing that might help identity any of the eight men.

The men had been held at high-security Paddington Green station

The hearing took most of the morning, although few of the men were in court for more than 10 minutes.

All of them wore the same white and grey clothes and sat on a wooden bench in the dock to follow the proceedings.

At one stage four men were in the dock together, each with two police officers in body armour standing behind them.

There was a scattering of friends or relatives in the public gallery, together with some foreign journalists unable to get into the main courtroom.

Inevitably, following the high-profile arrests and the speculation about what - if any - charges would be brought, there was considerable interest in seeing the men for the first time.

But, inevitably, there was also a sense of frustration: the full details of the charges and of the men's defence will not become clear until a trial takes place.

And with the police still to examine the contents of up to 100 seized computers, containing thousands of data files, that will almost inevitably be many months away.