Man 'plotted to cut off Muslim soldier's head'

An Islamist fanatic hatched a terrorist plot to kidnap a Muslim British soldier enjoying a night out and behead him "like a pig" in a lock-up garage, a court heard today.

Parviz Khan, who has pleaded guilty to charges connected to the plan, then intended to release footage of the killing on the internet, a jury at Leicester Crown Court was told.

Nigel Rumfitt QC, prosecuting two other men accused of offences under the Terrorism Act, said Khan, of Alum Rock, Birmingham, is not standing trial because he pleaded guilty to the charges he faces a fortnight ago.

Outlining the plot to kill a soldier, Mr Rumfitt told the jury that Khan hoped to kidnap a British Muslim soldier in Birmingham's Broad Street entertainment quarter with the help of drug dealers.

Mr Rumfitt told the court: "He would be taken to a lock-up garage and there he would be murdered by having his head cut off like a pig.

"This atrocity would be filmed... and the film released to cause panic and fear within the British armed forces and the wider public."

Mr Rumfitt also told the jury that Khan, a 37-year-old of Foxton Road, Alum Rock, was at the centre of a terrorist "cell" or network based in the Birmingham area.

The court heard that Khan was active in gathering items, including computer hard drives, range-finders and night vision equipment, to be sent out to Pakistan for use by terrorists operating near the Afghan border.

Mr Rumfitt added: "The prosecution say that Parviz Khan is a fanatic. He is a man who has the most violent and extreme views.

"He was enraged by the idea that there were Muslim soldiers in the British Army, some of them Muslims from The Gambia in West Africa."

The jury was also told that Khan wanted another man, Gambian national Basiru Gassama, to help identify the victim of the soldier plot.

Gassama, a 30-year-old of Radstock Avenue, Hodge Hill, Birmingham, has also pleaded guilty after failing to inform the authorities of the plan to kill a soldier.

In fact, the court heard, Gassama never came up with the details of an individual target for Khan, and the plan "lay dormant" after July 2006.

But, Mr Rumfitt added, Khan remained determined and in November 2006 he revived his interest in the plot.