A British Muslim accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners told a UK court on Monday he was planning a publicity stunt to draw viewers to a documentary film about British and US foreign policy.
Opening the defence's case in a widely watched trial, Abdulla Ahmed Ali told the court he and his friends had hoped to grab the world's attention but did not intend to kill anyone.
"What we were going to do was make a small device that would be set off in a sensitive area that would cause a lot of alarm and tension and chaos, or whatever," Ali, 27, told the court.
"We never intended to murder anyone or to injure anyone," he said. "We never even thought about going on an aeroplane."
Prosecutors say the suspects intended to simultaneously blow up a number of planes in mid-air from London's Heathrow Airport to the United States and Canada, potentially killing many hundreds of people, before they were caught in August 2006.
The eight deny conspiracy to commit murder or to carry out strikes on aircraft.
Ali said he had favored a large, propaganda-style attack on the Houses of Parliament, but that he and his friends had also considered power plants, the Bank of England, the Canary Wharf business area, various airports and oil refineries.
"We wanted something big enough to cause genuine concern. Also, if you are going to make threats, there's no point in doing it with a fire cracker. You have to do it with some credibility.
"We wanted something that would not just make a bang but also be considered serious and credible," he said, describing how they had searched on the Internet for the means to make a bomb but found most sites were fairly "wishy-washy".
At pains to explain his motives, Ali described how he had worked in a refugee camp in Pakistan in 2003 but grown disillusioned with aid work, saying that it wasn't getting to the root cause of the problems he saw with foreign policy.
After lengthy discussions, he said he and colleagues had decided that they wanted to make a shocking documentary that would show the world the horrors of British and American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. To publicize the documentary then needed a dramatic event that would draw everyone's attention.
"We thought that by making threats and demands to the British public... we could create mass media attention," he said. The publicity stunt would direct people to a documentary video, he said, possibly posted on YouTube.
"We wanted to make a documentary showing the suffering, just to expose that the foreign policy was the root cause of it all," he said, dressed in a smart suit and leaning on the edge of the witness box for support after standing for several hours.
Prosecutors say the plot involved homemade liquid explosives hidden in soft drink bottles, which would have been put together on board and detonated when the planes were in mid-air.
Ali, who graduated from a London university with a degree in computing, is accused of being one of the ringleaders.
