The alleged ringleader of the July 21 bomb conspiracy told his friend that they would next meet in heaven because he was going to die fighting jihad, a court was told yesterday.

Muktah Ibrahim was said to have held fanatical religious views, watched violent mujahi-din videos, listened to tapes of Abu Hamza’s sermons and frequently tried to convince his friend to fight a holy war.

The friend, who appeared in court under the name Bexhill and whose true identity is protected by a court order, said that Mr Ibrahim railed against Britain and America for killing innocent Muslims. “He mentioned the British Army are killing Muslim people and he has to fight against this.”

Shortly before he flew to Pakistan with two companions in December 2004, Mr Ibrahim began giving away possessions and saying goodbye to friends.

Bexhill said: “Muktah told me maybe we’re not going to see each other again, maybe we’ll see each other in Heaven, because he was going to die in jihad.”

Special arrangements were made at Woolwich Crown Court for the witness to give evidence during the fourth week of the trial.

The jury was told that Bexhill, a Middle Eastern man in his twenties, was friendly with four of the six men accused of plotting to carry out suicide attacks on the London transport network on July 21, 2005.

Large screens were placed in front of the dock so that the defendants could not see Bexhill. Members of the press and public were excluded from the well of the court to prevent them seeing him.

The witness entered the court through a rear door and wrote his real name on a piece of paper, which was shown to the jurors and counsel.

He said that he first arrived in Britain to study in September 2001. In June 2004 he enrolled to study a computer degree at a university in North London and became friends with Adel Yahya, another of the defendants.

Mr Yahya found him a room in Stoke Newington and Bexhill moved there in September 2004. He lived there for three months during which time he also met two of the other alleged plotters, Yassin Omar and Manfo Kwaku Asiedu.

Bexhill said that Mr Ibrahim talked frequently about jihad and listened to tapes of sermons by the extremist preachers Abu Hamza and Sheikh Faisal. He said: “There was a speech by Osama bin Laden about 9/11 and also the speech-es of the 19 guys involved in 9/11, reading their wills and saying why they did it.”

Mr Ibrahim had attended Finsbury Park mosque until it closed, and then went to one near by. Mr Omar was a frequent visitor to Mr Ibrahim’s flat and also had “fanatical, radical” views.

Bexhill said: “He has tried many times to convince me for jihad and he tried to convince me that those doing suicide bombs were right.”

Mr Omar and Mr Yahya had been to a training camp in Scot-land to get ready to fight. Mr Ibrahim, Bexhill added, told him that he had trained in Sudan and learnt to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. In late 2004 he began to speak of going on the haj pilgrimage, then to fight with two friends. Bexhill said: “He said he was not going to come back again to this country — he was saying he’d like to go for jihad and die there.”

But Mr Ibrahim reappeared a few months later and moved into Mr Omar’s flat in New Southgate. In the months after Mr Ibrahim’s return he often seemed to be “worrying and sweating” while Mr Yahya became increasingly “aggressive”. On one of the last occasions that Bexhill saw Mr Omar before July 21, he allegedly said: “Pray for me.”

Mr Ibrahim, 29, Mr Asiedu, 33, Mr Omar, 26, Mr Yahya, 24, Hussein Osman, 28, and Ramzi Mohammed, 25, deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life or damage property.

The trial continues.

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