A police picture shows the gang members who hatched a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. They are (from left) Parviz Khan, Mohammed Irfan, Basiru Gassama and Hamid Elasmar. (AFP)

London, Jan. 29: Parviz Khan, a 37-year-old Pakistani man from Birmingham, has pleaded guilty to a charge that he planned to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier and circulate the video among the public, a court was informed today.

Parviz’s aim was to discourage Muslims from joining the British armed forces, which have for many years run recruiting campaigns, backed by heavy advertising in Asian newspapers, aimed at attracting the ethnic minorities.

Describing the kidnap plot, the prosecution lawyer Nigel Rumfitt, QC, told Leicester crown court that Parviz hoped to kidnap a British Muslim soldier in Birmingham’s Broad Street entertainment quarter with the help of drug dealers. “He would be taken to a lock-up garage and there he would be murdered by having his head cut off like a pig,” said Rumfitt. “This atrocity would be filmed and the film released to cause panic and fear within the British armed forces and the wider public.”

The plan to video the slaughter will remind many of the technique that was used by the killers of the American journalist Daniel Pearl who was kidnapped and beheaded in Karachi in 2002. Videos have since become a common tool deployed by kidnappers in Iraq.

Rumfitt added: “The prosecution say that Parviz Khan is a fanatic. He is a man who has the most violent and extreme views. He was enraged by the idea that there were Muslim soldiers in the British Army, some of them Muslims from The Gambia in West Africa.”

Parviz was the ring leader of the kidnap plot in which three other men also from the Birmingham area, Basiru Gassama, 30, Mohammed Irfan, 31, and Hamid Elasmar, 44, were involved. They have admitted to offences under the Terrorism Act connected with the conspiracy. All four pleaded guilty two weeks ago but the media were ordered not to report those findings until the start of today’s proceedings.

The trial that began today was of a fifth and a sixth men, who deny being part of Parviz’s plot. Amjad Mahmood, 32, of Jackson Road, Alum Rock, Birmingham, denies knowing about the plot between April 2006 and February 2007, and failing to disclose it to the authorities.

Zahoor Iqbal, 30, of Elmbridge Road, Perry Barr, Birmingham, is also standing trial, having pleaded not guilty to possessing a document or record likely to be useful to a terrorist.