A Birmingham man paralysed by German neo-Nazi thugs said he was planning to commit suicide on his birthday because he sees no point in living any more.

Noel Martin (pictured) said he wanted to die on July 23 next year - a month on from the tenth anniversary of the attack which left him quadriplegic and dependent on round-the-clock carers.

The former building firm boss, who lives in Edgbaston, will head to Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal. He said he would like to hold a "small celebration" as he wanted to die on his 48th birthday.

"Then I would like to fall asleep - and that is all," he said.

Jamaican-born Mr Martin, a plasterer, was attacked by skinheads in Mahlow, near Berlin, where he went to work during the building boom of the 1980s, following the unifi-cation of Germany.

On June 16, he and two friends walked to a phone box near their work site. Mr Martin called his wife Jackie at home in Britain, noticing, as he spoke, 20 white youths drinking and jeering at a nearby roundabout. He didn't need to hear their racist jeers to know they were neo-Nazis.

He and his friends drove off, but within moments two of the gang were in pursuit. The Germans tried to ram his car and then to drive it off the road. Then all Mr Martin can remember is a thunderous roar so loud he thought it was gunfire. His windscreen shattered and the car veered off the road, crashing into a tree.

A concrete block had been thrown through the windscreen. Mr Martin awoke in hospital several days later with punctured lungs and pneumonia. He was also paralysed from the neck down because of a shattered spine, and lay in a coma for weeks.

Now, other people must wash and dress him, help him eat, drink, smoke and turn the pages of his newspapers and books.

Mr Martin's attackers were jailed for five and eight years - sentences criticised by some politicians and anti-racism campaigners as too lenient. They have since been released and although they were ordered to pay Mr Martin #150,000 and #300 per month for the rest of his life, he has seen little of it.

He suffered further heartbreak in 2000 when wife Jackie, who had cared for him round-the-clock, died of cancer just two days after they married.

Her death added to his sense of despair: "I don't live, I exist," he said in a TV interview.

He has remained determined to crush the racial prejudices which led to the attack.

In 2001 he led 2,500 protesters through Berlin to demonstrate against racial prejudices and in 2004 he welcomed a group of German youngsters from Mahlow to Birmingham.

One of Mr Martin's supporters, German doctor Heidrun Nobis, said: "He is a great role model and he should stay." ..SUPL: