A curry house owner hacked another takeaway worker to death after luring his victim to a quiet street with a fake order nearly 20 years ago, a court heard.

Foyjur Rahman, 44, is accused of being one of up to four men involved in the attack on 25-year-old Abdul Samad in Islington, north London.

The victim, who was known as Kamal, from Bow, east London, had turned up in Alwyne Road with a bag of curry after receiving a bogus order on the evening of May 21 1997.

But he dropped the curry and ran for his life when two men in black masks intercepted him armed with a meat cleaver and a knife, jurors were told.

As he was being chased down the street, the married father-of-two warned one shocked resident: "He's got a knife. He wants to kill me. Be careful," the Old Bailey heard.

Mr Samad, who ran Curry in a Hurry takeaway with two business partners, was then set upon on the ground before being left in a pool of blood.

He was rushed to hospital where he died early the next morning. A doctor described his injuries as "horrific - the like I have never seen before in my career", the court heard.

A post mortem examination found 18 separate chopping and stabbing injuries, including a "gaping" 4 inch wide wound to his waist.

The cause of death was put down to bleeding from multiple wounds and shock, prosecutor Mark Ellison QC said.

Two black masks, a bloody meat cleaver and carrier bags used to transport the murder weapons were found discarded near the scene.

At the time of the murder, Rahman was living in east London and helped to run a different curry takeaway in east Putney.

Mr Ellison told jurors that in the weeks leading up to his death, Mr Samad had been put under pressure to act as an "intermediary" between two groups of Bengalis.

When he refused to help sort out the dispute with the "Stoke Newington Boys", the victim had been threatened, jurors were told.

Mr Ellison said the defendant was also linked to the crime by fingerprints on a bag and DNA from saliva on one of the masks.

DNA from the other mask matched an associate who was extradited from Bangladesh and convicted of the murder in 2012, jurors were told.

The day after the killing, Rahman went to New York and he was only extradited back from the United States in January this year.

Rahman denies murder and the Old Bailey trial continues.