A man has pleaded guilty to a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier, a court was told on Tuesday.
Parviz Khan, a 37-year-old Briton, pleaded guilty earlier this month to a series of charges including the beheading plot which was thwarted by police and the MI5 security service a year ago.
Media had previously been barred from reporting Khan's plea until Tuesday, when a trial of two other men opened in the central English city of Leicester.
Prosecutor Nigel Rumfitt told the jury Khan was "a man who has the most violent and extreme Islamist views," and at the center of a Birmingham-based network gathering money and equipment to send to Pakistan for the use of "terrorists."
He also wanted to get himself involved in acts of terrorism, Rumfitt said.
"He was enraged by the idea that there are Muslim soldiers in the British army," the prosecutor continued, adding that Khan had decided to kidnap such a soldier with the help of drug dealers operating in Birmingham.
The victim was to be seized in a part of Birmingham known for its nightlife and bundled into a car.
"He would be taken to a lockup garage and there he would be murdered by having his head cut off like a pig. This atrocity would be filmed," Rumfitt said.