A man accused of leading an airline bomb plot wanted to set off a device in Parliament as a stunt, he told a jury.
Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, said he and two others had wanted to protest against UK foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan but no-one was intended to be hurt.
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He is one of eight men who deny a plot to blow up passenger planes in 2006.
He said homemade "suicide videos" made by himself and fellow defendants would have been combined with other internet footage to make an anti-government documentary to be posted on the YouTube website.
Mr Ali also told the court he had researched making an explosive device using a drinks bottle, hydrogen peroxide and batteries.
Previously in the trial, the jury was played a 16-minute video in which Mr Ali threatened to teach the West a "lesson they will never forget" and to punish and humiliate non-Muslims.
Prosecutors claim the gang planned to make hydrogen peroxide bombs disguised as soft drinks to detonate in mid-air on at least seven transatlantic passenger planes flying out of Heathrow airport.
The computer systems engineering graduate told the court the planned stunt would have caused huge disruption and generated international publicity.
He said: "If we are going to make threats there is no point doing it with a firecracker, you have got to do it with credibility.
"We did not want to kill or injure anyone. Something small enough to cause a large bang, maybe some smoke. Something that would be considered serious and credible, something to generate that mass media attention."
He said he had never considered bombing a plane, saying: "I never had any intention of murdering anyone or injuring anyone. At no stage did I ever even think of going on an airplane or causing an explosion there."
'No extremist'
Earlier, Mr Ali told the court he had become politically and religiously active as a teenager but was not an "extremist".
Mr Ali's co-defendants are: Assad Sarwar, 24, of High Wycombe, Bucks, Tanvir Hussain, 27, of Leyton, east London, Waheed Zaman, 23, and Arafat Waheed Khan, 26, both of Walthamstow, east London.
Also charged are Mohammed Gulzar, 26, of Barking, east London, Ibrahim Savant, 27, of Stoke Newington, north London, and Umar Islam, 29, of Plaistow, east London.
All eight deny two joint charges of conspiring to murder and to endanger aircraft.
Mr Ali told the court he had known Mr Khan since primary school and went to secondary school with Mr Savant.
He said he met Mr Zaman at Queen's Road mosque in Walthamstow and knew Mr Sarwar and Mr Islam through charity work but had only met Mr Gulzar once.
Mr Ali is one of eight children, five of them boys - one brother works for the Probation Service and another for London Underground.
His family moved to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s and returned for six years until 1987.
The trial continues.
(BBC)
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