Jurors have heard secret audio recordings of alleged animal rights activists at their headquarters in Eversley.

The covert material was recorded at Little Moorcote in Lower Common, which from October 2005, was the base for the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty group, Winchester Crown Court heard.

The recordings were part of surveillance carried out by police between November 2006 and May 2007, the court was told.

In the sound clips the jury heard a woman said to be Heather Nicholson, formerly of Pond Croft, Yateley, who said she would be happy if an aeroplane crashed into animal-testing laboratory Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire and killed all the people that worked there.

The footage was played in the trial of five allegedly animal rights activists charged with conspiracy to blackmail.

Nicholson, along with Daniel Wadham, formerly of Pond Croft, Yateley, Gerrah Selby, formerly of Aldershot Road, Church Crookham, Gavin Medd-Hall, from Croydon, and Trevor Holmes, from Crawley, deny conspiring together between November 15 2001 and May 2 2007 to blackmail companies they believed to be associated with HLS.

During the trial, which has been running for more than a month, the jury was told that the sole aim of SHAC is to shut down HLS.

The prosecution claim that SHAC used "unwarranted demands with menaces" to get secondary and tertiary companies involved with HLS to stop doing business with them.

During the footage, played to the court on Monday, the woman said her hatred for the companies who work with HLS was at the "top end of the scale", the court heard.

The prosecution have described 41-year-old Nicholson as a "driving force" within SHAC and someone who held a "managerial role at the top of end of the hierarchy”.

The trial continues.

To read more about the trial pick up a copy of the Aldershot News on Friday November 21.