A biker from returning home from a bikers festival was shot dead from a moving car as it sped along a Warwickshire motorway at up to 90mph, a court has heard.

Prosecutor Timothy Raggatt QC said the killing of Gerry Tobin was carried out with "great skill and precision" and had been planned almost like a military operation.

Opening the case against six men accused of murdering Mr Tobin on the M40, Mr Raggatt told a jury at Birmingham Crown Court that the killing was "a thoroughly cold-blooded business" calculated down to the finest detail.

Mr Tobin, a 35-year-old mechanic from Mottingham, south-east London, died in a split-second when he was shot near Warwick Services on August 12 last year.

Mr Raggatt told the jury: "The incident was a thoroughly ruthless one executed with great skill and precision, great timing... and was the product of a great deal of planning.

"It was a thoroughly carefully aimed shot delivered by someone in a vehicle.

"It was a moving vehicle travelling at something like 85-90mph, approaching carefully from behind."

The jury of six men and six women was told that Mr Tobin, who was travelling in convoy with two other motorcycles returning from the Bulldog Bash at Stratford-upon-Avon, was targeted not because of who he was but because of what he was.

Addressing the motive for the crime, Mr Raggatt told the jury: "This wasn't a case of a man being killed for any personal motive or any personal reason."

Simon Turner, a 41-year-old from Nuneaton, and 53-year-old Malcolm Bull, from Milton Keynes, are on trial alongside four men from Coventry - Karl Garside, 45, his brother Dane Garside, 42, Dean Taylor, 47, and 46-year-old Ian Cameron.