A KOREAN-AMERICAN met a man with an Australian accent at a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Pakistan weeks after the September 11 attacks, a Sydney court was told yesterday.

Yong Ki Kwon told the trial of five men charged with conspiring to plan a terrorist act that he knew the man only by the name Abu Asad.

Mr Kwon said he prayed, ate, exercised and studied with the man, who had arrived at the camp about four days before the end of his own training. He saw him clean a firearm and crawling and rolling on the ground in field manoeuvres, he said. He had later identified Abu Asad in a photograph, the court heard.

At the beginning of the trial the Crown alleged that one of the accused men, Moustafa Cheikho, had trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan - an allegation he has disputed. Yesterday the jury was told it could consider Mr Kwon's evidence in relation to Moustafa Cheikho only, not in relation to any of his four co-accused.

The Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy also told the jury to disregard anything it might have ever heard about the organisation. "Please put anything you may have read about that organisation completely out of your mind and focus solely on the evidence you hear in the trial," he said.

Mr Kwon, 33, who served 38 months in prison after initially being charged with conspiracy and firearms offences, gave evidence via videolink from the US.

He told the court he had left his home in Virginia in September 2001 after an Islamic lecturer told him and some friends about a fatwa and the need to defend Afghanistan.

He made arrangements to go to the Lashkar-e-Taiba camp 2400 metres high in the mountains of Kashmir to undergo 45 days of training.

For the first 12 days the recruits learnt about weapons, taking apart and firing pistols, assault weapons, machine guns, and discharging rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns.

For the remaining days, Mr Kwon said, his group of nine trainees learnt field manoeuvres, ambush techniques and practised target shooting.