- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday June 7 2000 01.17 BST
Interviewed by police after his arrest, Copeland described walking into the Admiral Duncan pub in April last year to plant the bomb: "I saw the people I was going to maim and kill. I didn't feel joy about it. I didn't feel sad. I just didn't feel anything."
He claimed he was "just like a robot" and felt neither "sadness, sorrow nor joy."
The jury was told how the 24-year-old engineer idolised the dictators Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein, as well as Henry Lee Lucas, an American serial killer. He said he wanted to get caught because that would make him famous, the court heard.
Copeland told officers that he felt sad about one of his victims, Andrea Dykes, because she had a baby.
Mrs Dykes, 27, four months pregnant with her first child, was killed by the Soho blast along with John Light, 33, best man at her wedding, and their friend Nick Moore, 31. They were among a group of five going to the theatre that night "who had decided to make a day out of it in London". Seventy others were injured.
Destiny
Copeland, of Cove, Hampshire, told detectives: "I did feel sick about that." However, he said: "I just had to do it. It was my destiny." He told police he had also felt sorry for the 23-month-old child who had a nail embedded in his skull by the bomb planted in Brixton two weeks before the Soho explosion.
Nigel Sweeney QC, prosecuting, told the jury: "He said that his heroes were Hitler, about whom he had some books, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and a man called Henry Lee, a serial killer in the United States. He said he liked the fact that he had terrorised the UK and that was the plan from the start."
Copeland, an engineer's assistant working on the Jubilee Line extension, told police: "I believe what I believe and I took that belief to an extreme."
Mr Sweeney said: "He said he wanted to get caught, to be famous."
Copeland told police: "If no one remembers who you were, you never existed."
Following his arrest Copeland was remanded into custody at Belmarsh prison, where he was kept in the health care unit. While there he told a prison officer: "I'm not mad. I know why I'm in prison. I did plant those bombs. I targeted minority groups for political and religious reasons."
The jury had previously heard how he thought the Bible supported his beliefs and was "against racial mixing".
He told the prison guard: "I'm not mad. I've already worked out how to get out of this cell." Three months ago Copeland admitted three charges of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but the prosecution refused to accept the pleas. He denies murder.
Blame
Yesterday stockily-built Copeland, dressed in a blue shirt and dark trousers, sat impassively in the dock of court one as Mr Sweeney outlined details of the terror campaign which targeted Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho in the space of 13 days last spring. The prosecution revealed how Copeland had tried at one point to pin the blame on extremist group Combat 18. After dumping his bomb in the street in Brick Lane, east London, on April 25, he dialled 999 from a phone box.
Mr Sweeney said: "Copeland, when the operator answered, did not speak to give any warning, but silently pressed the keys 2, 1, 8." The number two was meant to represent a C, in a code where zero was taken to mean A.
In January that year Copeland had joined a far right group called the National Socialist Movement, the court heard. But he claimed to be acting entirely on his own, telling nobody of his plans. Interviewed by police, he described Combat 18 as a "bunch of yobs", and was dismissive of another group, the White Wolves, which also claimed responsibility.
The jury was yesterday shown CCTV footage of the Brick Lane bomb exploding minutes after a passing motorist picked up the bag it was dumped in and threw it into the boot of his car. Replayed in jerky stills, the camera captured the orange bloom of the explosion ripping apart Gerard Lynch's red Ford Sierra, followed by a plume of black smoke.
The smoke cleared to reveal debris scattered across the street, but this was clear of cars and almost clear of pedestrians at the time. Ten people suffered minor injuries in the blast, which caused £50,000 damage in the area, the court heard.
Giving evidence yesterday Mr Lynch, who is in his 50s, told the court: "There was a cardboard box and it was full of screws. I thought it was a workman's bag."
He walked to two nearby police stations to report the "lost property" but found them closed. "It just came into my mind about the nail bomb that went off the previous week, but I still did not believe it was a bomb."
Still away from his car, he dialled 999 on his mobile and discovered from the operator that the bomb had gone off.
Other witnesses described the scenes of chaos when the first bomb, in Brixton, went off. Street trader Miles Macleod, 23, told how he and friends looked inside the bag and saw pink tissue paper, nails, a clock, batteries and wires. Mr Macleod said: "We thought that it was a joke. We started saying things like 'It's a bomb' and then we realised it was a bomb."
Mr Macleod and fellow traders alerted staff at the nearby Iceland store, and police were called. Iceland store manager Paul Maskell told the court how he and security guard Aiah Menjor tried to keep people away.
"No one was taking it seriously at all. We told people don't go down there and they just pushed past. When it went off, everything seemed to go blank, and you felt like you were in a cocoon of yourself. You weren't aware of anything going on around you - just yourself."
Mr Maskell was among the injured. A nail was embedded in his head and another in his chest.
The trial continues.
