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He said that he stolen three computers to give to Waheed, because they were needed by members of al-Qaeda.

Waheed, who had used a variety of aliases including Jabed, Jab, Ismael, and Abdul Waheed in Pakistan, had told him that the "brothers needed computers" Babar said.

"In February 2003 I thought the brothers he was talking about were the Pakistani brothers involved in Jihad," he told the Old Bailey. "But in March 2003 I understood brothers to mean Arabs or members of al-Qaeda."

Babar said that Waheed had a major part to play in the network as a go-between. He had first become aware of him, he said, because his flatmate in Pakistan - a man named Asim - had identified him as his "contact".

Asked what he meant by contact, Babar said: "If you wanted to go somewhere or wanted something, to go to Afghanistan or to receive some sort of training, you needed to contact someone who will lead you to your goal."

Asim had come to Pakistan from east London, but he also had "strong ties" with the "Crawley group", Babar told the court. He had wanted to go to Afghanistan for jihad, it was alleged. The pair had lived together in a flat in Lahore and were joined by others from the "east London group" of which Asim was part.

Babar says he was a member of the British cell, meeting some of them in training camps in Pakistan. He has pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to being part of the British plot.

Babar told jurors about two Britons he knew in Pakistan and added: "They were both using Waheed Mahmood to get into Afghanistan."

He said that soon after, he emailed him about a cache of weapons left behind by an associate from London, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and buried near Punjab University in Lahore. ’I wanted to show Waheed Mahmood where we buried them so if he ever needed them he could dig them up and take them.’

Asked what the weapons were, he replied: "AK47s, magazines, about 2,000-3,000 rounds of ammunition and grenades. They were buried in this area outside Punjab University."

He told the court that he first came face-to-face with Waheed in April or May 2002 when he came to Babar’s home in Lahore. Babar said Waheed was working for a utility company in England and was from the Crawley area.

He told the court how he met defendants Omar Khyam, Garcia Shujah Mahmood and Waheed on trips to Crawley. Describing his first meeting with Khyam at a mosque in the Sussex town, Babar said: ’He had a long beard. He was wearing a black robe. We just exchanged greetings.’

He said he knew Khyam’s younger brother was Shujah, and that their father ran a textile business with links to Karachi in Pakistan and Belgium. "The textile factory he had in Karachi, whatever he was making they sold in Belgium. They had stores of some sort."

Babar told how he met Garcia with friends in an east London restaurant and they discussed Jihad. "We just talked, we were in the restaurant," Babar said. "Him and Imran had indicated to me they wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight."

Babar also told how, after a spell teaching English as a second language in 2002, he got a job with the Pakistan Software Export Board but never did any work and ended up stealing five computers from them, three of which he gave to Waheed. Pakistan Software Export was run by the older brother of Sajeel Shahid, one of the founder members of al-Muhajiroun in Pakistan.

The trial continues.

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