A former Tesco worker caught buying a gun in an MI5 sting operation has denied compiling a kill-list of colleagues and customers branded “race traitors”.

Alfie Coleman was arrested by counter-terrorism police in an east London supermarket car park moments after picking up a Makarov pistol and ammunition on 29 September 2023.

During a hearing at the Old Bailey on Thursday, the prosecutor, Nicholas de la Poer KC, reminded Coleman of a list he had compiled of people who had “upset” him. Individuals fell broadly into two categories: people he categorised as “undercover police officers”, and “race traitors”, jurors heard.

Describing the annotated list, de la Poer said a “very large number of people are the subject of a racial slur by you or described as race traitors”. Coleman said: “I cannot remember what was going through my head. I cannot say what I meant when I wrote those words down.”

Referring to a colleague and her husband who appeared on the list, the prosecutor observed: “This is a white woman married to a person of non-white heritage and you have described her as a race traitor. This is someone who you worked with. Why did you describe her as a race traitor?” Coleman said he could not remember.

De la Poer asked the defendant: “Was that a list of people who you thought needed to be killed?” Coleman replied: “No.”

Coleman said he understood “race traitor” to mean someone who was friends or in a relationship with a “non-white” person. He added that he also included those in the “system” working against the interests of white people.

The judge, Richard Marks KC, asked Coleman to clarify his stance, saying: “Regardless of colour, if you cooperate with authorities and work in the government, you are a race traitor – people working for government means doing something against white people?” The defendant replied: “That’s the way I understood it, yeah.”

De la Poer asked the defendant about his collection of extreme rightwing books, including one Coleman had described as “captivating” and lifechanging. A chapter entitled “the day of the rope” detailed public hangings of people it described as “race traitors”, the court was told.

Coleman said he was not “specifically” interested in that part. He denied he had read another book in his collection about a man who hunted down interracial couples as “race traitors”.

The prosecutor suggested: “You were preparing to engage in illegal behaviour because you bought a firearm and so it’s not a case that you did not do things because they were illegal.” The defendant replied: “I agree to a certain extent. There are a lot of reasons why I did it.”

De la Poer asked: “In terms of publications likely to be of use to terrorists, you know the explosives manuals were describing how a person might make a bomb, is that right?” Coleman replied: “I did not read them. It is only through the process of the trial I have seen excerpts and screen shots.”

The defendant has accepted he had a large quantity of extreme rightwing material and has pleaded guilty to possessing 10 documents which contained information likely to be useful to terrorists.

Coleman, 21, from Great Notley in Essex, has admitted attempting to possess both a firearm and ammunition but denies he was preparing for a terrorist attack.

The trial continues.