LONDON, 19 September 2006 — A British Muslim accused of being involved in a fertilizer bomb plot refused to answer questions from his own legal team yesterday because he said he was worried he might put his family in danger.

On the start of the third day of his evidence in Britain’s biggest terrorism trial since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Omar Khyam, 24, from West Sussex, was asked by his lawyers about his purchase of 600 kg of fertilizer and why he then stored it.

But Khyam refused to answer, claiming it was putting his family in danger. Last week the former London Metropolitan University student told the Old Bailey the 9/11 attacks had made him happy.

But he said he was joking when he told friends he wanted bomb Parliament during Prime Minister’s questions, the weekly session attended by the country’s most senior politicians.

Khyam, along with six other men accused of planning to attack a host of possible English targets, has denied charges he and his co-defendants planned to set off bombs in pubs, clubs, trains, a shopping center and synagogues using explosives made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Yesterday, Khyam’s lawyer Joel Bennathan asked his client: “Mr. Khyam in November 2003, did you with the assistance of another or others buy and then store 600 kg of fertilizer.”

Khyam responded by saying the Pakistani intelligence service had spoken with his family members in Pakistan about what had been said about them in court. “I think they (the intelligence service) are worried about what I may end up revealing about them. So right now my priority is the security of my family there. As much as I want to clarify matters I am going to stop.” A clearly shocked Bennathan then asked for an adjournment.

In evidence last Thursday, Khyam said he had gone to Pakistan in 2000 to train with the country’s intelligence service, the ISI, so he could help “free Kashmir,” the Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Prosecutors have already told the court Khyam was secretly recorded discussing possible targets such as the biggest nightclub in London — The Ministry of Sound — and that the seven men had links to Al-Qaeda.

The key prosecution witness in the trial is a Pakistan-born US supergrass who has admitted terrorism-related offenses in New York.

During evidence Mohammed Babar gave earlier in the trial, he said he had met some of the defendants at terrorism training camps in Pakistan.

Khyam, his younger brother Shujah Mahmood, 18, Anthony Garcia, 27, Nabeel Hussain, 20, Jawad Akbar, 22, Waheed Mahmood, 33, and Salahuddin Amin, 30, are accused of conspiring to cause an explosion likely to endanger life.

Khyam, Garcia and Hussain are also charged with possessing 600 kg (1,300 lb) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer for terrorism purposes and Khyam and Mahmood also deny having aluminum powder — an ingredient in explosives.