One of the men accused of involvement in a British terror cell linked to al-Qaida admitted in his first police interview he had once helped make and detonate a fertiliser bomb, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.

Salahuddin Amin, 31, told anti-terror detectives he spent two days learning how to make explosives while at a house in Kohat, Pakistan, in 2003.

In the interview at Paddington Green police station, played to the Old Bailey jury, Amin claimed one of his co-accused, Omar Khyam, also took part in the training session.

He told police how they had received instructions on how to make an ammonium nitrate fertiliser bomb and said they detonated "fertiliser explosive" in a nearby river.

Amin also said that he had learned how to make the poison ricin and that he manufactured it, but never used it.

He told police he had once visited a Jihadi training camp in Pakistan, on another occasion fired a Kalashnikov, fallen in with extremists in the UK and had got "mixed up with terrorists", the jury heard.

However, he told detectives he did not consider himself to be a terrorist.

Amin, from Luton, Beds; Khyam, 24, his brother Shujah Mahmood, 19, Waheed Mahmood, 34, and Akbar, 22, all from Crawley, West Sussex; Anthony Garcia, 23, of Ilford, east London; and Nabeel Hussain, 21, of Horley, Surrey, deny conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life between January 1, 2003 and March 31, 2004.

Khyam, Garcia and Hussain also deny a charge under the Terrorism Act of possessing 600kg (1,300lb) of ammonium nitrate fertiliser for terrorism.

Khyam and Shujah Mahmood further deny possessing aluminium powder for terrorism.

The trial continues.