For eight days during the summer of 2005 he was on the run, identified as one of the most wanted men in Britain.

His face was familiar from police posters of the 21/7 suspects as the “bus bomber” who carried a homemade device hidden in a rucksack on to the top deck of a No 26 bus in Shoreditch, East London.

And television footage of his arrest by armed police, who forced him out of his hiding place with teargas and ordered him to strip to his underwear, was beamed around the world.

Yesterday Muktar Mohammed Said Ibrahim, 29, offered his first public explanation of the events of July 21, 2005, when London was gripped by fears of a repeat of the suicide attacks that killed 52 innocent people a fortnight before.

The alleged ringleader of the 21/7 plot stepped into the witness box after the Crown closed its case at the end of the ninth week of the trial at Woolwich Crown Court. Mr Ibrahim, who came to Britain as a 13-year-old refugee from war-torn Eritrea, denied that he intended to be a suicide bomber.

Holding a copy of the Koran, he swore in the name of Allah to tell the truth.

George Carter Stephenson, QC, his defence counsel, invited Mr Ibrahim to answer a short series of questions that would summarise his case.

“It is your case that you were the person on the No 26 bus on July 21, 2005?” Mr Carter Stephenson asked.

“Yes,” answered Mr Ibrahim. Mr Carter Stephenson: “Did you have, to describe it neutrally, a device with you?”

Mr Ibrahim: “Yes.” Mr Carter Stephenson: “Did you intend or hope that that device would explode?”

Mr Ibrahim: “No.” Mr Carter Stephenson: “Was the device an improvised explosive device, was it to your knowledge capable of detonating?”

Mr Ibrahim: “No, it’s not capable of detonating.”

Mr Carter Stephenson: “In a short sentence, why did you have that device with you on the bus?”

Mr Ibrahim: “To protest against the plight of Muslims everywhere, especially in Iraq.”

Mr Carter Stephenson: “It is the prosecution case that on July 21, 2005, you were to be a suicide bomber.” Mr Ibrahim: “No, that’s not true.”

He told the court that he and his family settled in northwest London after arriving in Britain in November 1990.

He left school aged 16 with two GCSEs and went to college in Harrow to study leisure and tourism. He dropped out after less than a year and worked in a variety of jobs in restaurants, shops and market stalls.

In January 2003 he left Britain for the first time and travelled to Sudan where, he said, he spent two months visiting aunts and uncles.

Mr Ibrahim said that allegations made by a key prosecution witness, known to the court only as Bexhill, that he had boasted of receiving “jihad training” in Sudan and had learnt to fire a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, were untrue.

He insisted: “I went [to Sudan] to visit family and relatives, to have a holiday.”

The jury has been told that four identical devices, made up of hydrogen peroxide explosive with a detonator made from TATP high explosive, part-detonated on three London Underground trains and a bus on 21/7.

A fifth device was found intact after being abandoned in a park at Little Wormwood Scrubs, West London.

Mr Ibrahim, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 33, Yassin Omar, 26, Hussein Osman, 28, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Adel Yahya, 24, deny charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life.

The trial continues.

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