A Muslim community elder told a jury yesterday how years of trouble from the British National Party activists next door resulted in him going for his white neighbour with a kitchen knife.

Habib Khan is accused of stabbing to death Keith Brown, 53, who died in the street after a major artery was cut.

The jury was shown photographs of Mr Khan’s battered face when he was beaten a few months earlier by Mr Brown’s son, also a BNP activist, in an unprovoked assault.

“The last four years I’m living in hell,” Mr Khan, 50, of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, said as he took to the witness box. “I’ll keep my patience but some time when he do the things . . . I don’t know where I am and what I am going to do.”

Police were repeatedly called to disputes, the court was told. After the Khans installed closed-circuit television, Mr Brown and his son would mouth insults so that the microphones could not record them, the Asian man told Stafford Crown Court.

On the day Mr Brown died Mr Khan was in the kitchen when a daughter alerted him that Mr Brown was trying to kill her brother, Azir.

My Khan grabbed the knife and went outside to find Mr Brown holding his son in a headlock. He tapped the white man on the shoulder. Mr Brown turned and mouthed: “I’ll kill him.” Mr Khan said, using slight pressure, he put the knife on to Mr Brown’s back so he could feel the blade. But Mr Brown fell, pushing the knife in farther.

As his neighbour struggled to his knees, Mr Khan pulled the weapon from his back. “I have never seen blood like that in my life,” he said. “It really shocked me.”

His voice faltered as he recalled: “A mother lost a child, a family lost their dad and my target was one day Mr Brown going to be a good neighbour.”

Mr Khan denies murder. He and his son Azir Habib Saddique deny wounding Mr Barker. His other son, Khazir Habib Saddique, has admitted wounding Mr Barker. The trial continues.

dkennedy@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth