Two teenagers smoked cannabis just hours before torching an Oxford home, a court heard.

Anum Khan, nine, died in the horrific blaze at her home in Magdalen Road, on August 26 last year. Her brother, Majid, 15, died two days later.

Alan Swanton and Thomas Liedl, both 18, set fire to the terraced house by squirting petrol through the letterbox and lighting it, Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Yesterday, Swanton, who spent his second day in the witness box, said he and Liedl had smoked cannabis while Liedl was delivering pizzas. Several hours later, Swanton said, the pair set fire to the Khans' home.

Swanton also told the jury that he and Liedl planned to give each other false alibis, until they decided to change their story two weeks before the trial started.

The false alibi, the jury heard, would have contained the lie that he and Liedl had not been in Oxford on the night of the murders and had been staying at a relative's house.

Police found two plastic drinks bottles, used as petrol containers, with Swanton's fingerprints on them. The court heard that Swanton originally planned to tell police that he, Liedl and Sundar Khutan had visited Oxford a week before the fire and had discarded the plastic bottles in the Cowley Road area.

But he changed his story and decided to admit he and Liedl did start the fire because of "his conscience", the jury heard.

Christopher Hotten QC, defending, acting for accused Haroon Sharif, asked Swanton: "I put to you that when you were faced with the inevitability that responsibility for these two deaths would come to your door, you went for the next best option, manslaughter, not murder. Is that right?"

Swanton replied: "Yes."

The judge Mr Justice Jowitt then asked the defendant: "Had you realised before then that a false account would not wash or was there some other reason?"

Swanton said: "I could not take it on my conscience any more." Mr Hotten then told Swanton: "What the jury has heard are different lies from the ones you planned to tell originally."

"No," Swanton replied.

The defendant repeatedly told the jury that he set fire to the Khans' home as a "favour" to fellow accused, Haroon Sharif.

Swanton told the court earlier that fellow accused, Haroon Sharif - for whom he said he started the fire as a favour - had told him that there was no-one in the Khans' house. The six charged with the two murders are Alan Swanton, 18, of Southern Way, Letchworth, Hertfordshire; brothers Mohammed Nawaz, 21, and Haq Nawaz, 31, both of Ridge Road, Letchworth; Thomas Liedl, 18, of Birdshill, Letchworth; Haroon Sharif, 20, of Morrell Avenue, Oxford; and Riaz Munshi, 26, of Fulwell Road, Sheffield. They all deny the charges.

The trial continues.

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