Air accused 'targeted Terminal 3'

Abdulla Ahmed Ali said he wanted to make a documentary

A man accused of leading a plot to blow up passenger planes has admitted planning to set off an explosive device at an airport.

Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, told Woolwich Crown Court he had initially wanted to target Parliament, but abandoned the idea because security was too tight.

He said he was particularly interested in Heathrow Terminal 3 because it was used by several American airlines.

Mr Ali is one of eight men who deny conspiring to blow up planes in 2006.

Prosecutors claim the defendants planned to make hydrogen peroxide bombs disguised as soft drinks to detonate in mid-air on at least seven transatlantic passenger planes flying out of Heathrow airport.

But Mr Ali told the court they had never planned to board a plane.

'A disturbance'

He said the group had initially favoured targeting the House of Commons, but had decided "we'd probably get shot", so had switched their focus to US airline offices at Heathrow.

We did not even think about boarding a plane Abdullah Ahmed Ali

He said they had intended to leave one or two devices in a bin or plant pot and time them to go off after five or 10 minutes to give them time to escape.

"We were trying to create a disturbance, not kill anyone," Mr Ali said.

"We did not even think about boarding a plane. Our aim was to set off a device at a terminal, cause a disturbance then release our video."

He said the device had had to appear real to get "a lot of attention" - setting off something like a firework would not be taken seriously.

He admitted he had researched flight times and destinations, but said that had been part of the plan to target Heathrow itself, investigating which terminals were used by American carriers and which periods were the busiest to cause "maximum disruption".

Mr Ali said by late July 2006, he suspected they were under surveillance so put his plan on hold.

'Make it realistic'

On Tuesday, Mr Ali told the jury how he began recruiting people to make al-Qaeda-style martyrdom videos.

He said he asked co-accused Waheed Zaman, 24, to make a "realistic and sensationalist" militant-type address and told him what to say.

"I gave him a structure script, a bullet point structure of what to say and how to do it," he said.

"I said to him, 'Try and make it as realistic as you can'. I told him to make it as sensational as possible."

Excerpt from Abdullah Ahmed Ali's video

"The whole idea was to be aggressive, sensationalist, copying the rhetoric and styles seen in other videos."

Mr Ali said the video was a publicity stunt to advertise a documentary he was making attacking British foreign policy.

One video, in which he himself spoke of teaching the West "a lesson they will never forget" was "propaganda" he planned to post on the internet to scare the government.

Mr Ali's co-defendants are: Mr Zaman and Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, both of Walthamstow, east London, Assad Sarwar, 25, of High Wycombe, Bucks, and Tanvir Hussain, 27, of Leyton, east London.

Also charged are Mohammed Gulzar, 26, of Barking, east London, Ibrahim Savant, 27, of Stoke Newington, north London, and Umar Islam, 30, of Plaistow, east London.

All eight deny two joint charges of conspiring to murder and to endanger aircraft.

The trial was adjourned until Wednesday.