A MAN accused of plotting to destroy CCTV footage at a petrol station was praying at a mosque during the alleged murder he was accused of trying to cover up, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

Rodney Ferm, barrister for Salman Ismail, pointed to the “inadequacy” of the prosecution evidence against him in his closing speech to the jury.

Ismail, 31, of Hollin Road, Shipley, Bradford, denies conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by conspiring to destroy CCTV footage at Whitehall Service Station in Birkenshaw by arson and robbery.

The allegation is also denied by Mohammed Nisar Khan, 41, of Holme Lane, Tong, Bradford, and Tony Grant, 39, of Queens Road, Bradford.

Khan and Grant plead not guilty to murdering Amriz Iqbal and Khan denies attempting to murder Adnan Ahmed.

Mr Iqbal, known as Major, suffered a fatal head injury when he was hit by a silver Kia Sedona in Sandford Road, Bradford Moor, shortly after 1pm on October 3.

The father of three, 40, of Curzon Road, Bradford Moor, was crossing the road with Mr Ahmed when the vehicle struck them.

Ismail is alleged to have tried to destroy CCTV from the petrol station showing Khan, known as Meggy, and Grant, known as Granty, with the Kia Sedona about an hour before the collision.

Mr Ferm said Ismail was not present at “the fatal event.” He was proved to be praying at a mosque at the time.

“There is nothing he needed to cover up for his own personal reasons so if he was involved at all, someone must have brought him in to do it,” the jury was told.

But no eye witnesses put him at the failed arson attempt, late on October 3, or the botched robbery early the following afternoon.

The police had recovered nothing from Ismail to link him in any way to the allegations. There was no forensic or scientific evidence to put him at the scene of the offences.

“Did he contribute petrol, or a can to put it in, or a lighter, or matches, or face masks? There is no evidence of that,” Mr Ferm said.

“Salman Ismail was in reality in no special position of knowledge on how to go about the task of neutralising any CCTV.”

“There were three men in the back of the Kia, why not one of them? It would be easy to recruit one of them,” Mr Ferm said.

An eye witness to the arson attempt spoke of seeing two men on a scooter. A scooter was left at the scene by the two young men who tried to rob the CCTV footage the following day. Neither of them was Ismail.

Mr Ferm said cell site evidence purporting to link Ismail to the conspiracy was “incomplete and unsatisfactory.”

“If he was sitting at home being the mastermind or organiser of the attempts to get the CCTV by arson and robbery, where are the phone calls?”

The police evidence was “massively incomplete,” Mr Ferm said.

Following the botched robbery, where was the call to say: “It’s all gone wrong, we’ve had to run away, we’ve left the bike there?”

Speaking about a Skoda said to link Ismail to the conspiracy, Mr Ferm said he had never been seen in it or with it by any witness in the trial.

Mr Ferm concluded: “The man we represent is now in your hands and I ask you to find that, taken at its height, the evidence here isn’t enough.”

The Recorder of Bradford, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC, will finish summing up the case to the jury on Monday morning and the panel will then retire to begin considering its verdicts.