Around lunchtime on Saturday June 30, 2007, Bilal Abdulla and Kafeel Ahmed -by now the most wanted men in the country - sat in a green Jeep Cherokee in a car park on Loch Lomondside, looking out over the calm water.

Barely 24 hours earlier the two men had escaped from central London after failing to detonate two car bombs outside a crowded nightclub, the jury at the trial of two men heard.

Having left clues behind which would lead the police to them, the men, one a doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, prepared for what was to be a final mission - a suicide attack that would bring Islamist terrorism to Scotland. Mr Ahmed, who was in the driver's seat, started the vehicle and headed back towards Glasgow Airport.

On the second day of the trial of Dr Abdulla and his co-accused Mohammed Asha for conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions, a jury in Woolwich Crown Court heard details of the day Islamist terrorism came to Scotland.

Making the opening case for the prosecution, Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, recounted the two days last summer during which, he said, Dr Abdulla and the late Mr Ahmed, who died from his injuries in the Glasgow Airport attack, had attempted to set off car bombs in London and Glasgow.

The jury heard how the pair had driven two Mercedes cars, packed with gas canisters, petrol and nails, into London in early hours of June 29, last year.

Mr Laidlaw said Dr Abdulla parked one car, a green Mercedes, outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket at 1.24am. At the time there were 556 customers in the club. Inside the car, the prosecutor told the jury, there were nearly 900 50mm nails arranged around opened gas cylinders and petrol soaked duvet covers.

Using umbrellas to hide from CCTV cameras the two men caught bicycle rickshaws to escape the scene at 1.39am. They met up in Edgware Road, stayed overnight at an east London hotel before returning to Scotland the next morning via a meeting with Dr Asha at his workplace, the Royal Infirmary in Stoke, the jury was told.

Mr Laidlaw then asked the jury to imagine the pair working through the night of June 29 at their rented home in Neuk Crescent, Houston, Renfrewshire, preparing a third vehicle for an attack on Glasgow Airport.

At about 5.30am Dr Abdulla sent an e-mail to his colleagues in which he pretended to be his sister and said he had been paralysed in a road accident abroad. Mr Ahmed also prepared an online will for his brother.

By 8am, the pair left Neuk Crescent and were picked up on CCTV travelling north towards Loch Lomond. Walkers heading to the hills noticed a green Jeep Cherokee in the car park at Milarrochy Bay on the eastern shore of the loch around 8am.

By 3.04pm, the Jeep was picked up on CCTV close to Glasgow Airport. Eight minutes later the vehicle, with Mr Ahmed driving and Dr Abdulla in the front passenger seat reached Caledonia Way, the front entrance of the terminal. A minute later, the court heard, Mr Ahmed turned the Jeep sharply towards the building in an obvious attempt to crash through to the check in desks beyond the entrance.

The court was then shown dramatic CCTV footage of the moment the car bomb was driven into the airport terminal, forcing hundreds of passengers to flee in terror.

One camera inside the terminal building captured large queues of passengers waiting at a line of check-in desks. As the Jeep was driven into the doorway, passengers turned and looked in shock before running in every direction. The prosecutor said people were trampled in the panic as people tried to escape.

"Fortunately for those within the building, the Jeep became caught against the right hand side of the entrance doors," said Mr Laidlaw. "Undeterred and in a very determined attempt to penetrate the building Kafeel Ahmed then reversed out and with the engine revving and the tyres screeching, made the first of a number of further attempts to crash through the airport doors." The driver's face, Mr Laidlaw told the jury, was noted to be set and determined as he stared forward.

Having failed to penetrate the building, Mr Laidlaw said Mr Ahmed and Dr Abdulla lit and threw petrol bombs as they shouted "Allu Akbar", God is great. Mr Laidlaw described the scene: "The driver, Kafeel Ahmed, was also seen to pour and shake fuel from a can out of the window on his side of the vehicle. He then threw another petrol bomb down into that pool of fuel before getting out of the Jeep.

"Once he got out he was immediately engulfed in flames. As the flames swept the vehicle and into the terminal building people started to realise what was going on."

Meanwhile, a camera outside the building, played to the jury, showed the four-wheel drive vehicle engulfed with flames. An Asian man in a white T-shirt could be seen grappling with police before running away.

Mr Laidlaw said: "It is clear that having failed to detonate the vehicles in London they were prepared to do literally anything to achieve an explosion which was bound, having been successful, to result in them losing their lives.

"As police officers and members of the public, stunned by what had happened, gathered in an attempt to distinguish the fire, Ahmed, even though he himself was alight, tried to obstruct them by punching and kicking out."