A second witness has told a Birmingham election fraud trial he saw a Labour city councillor at a deserted warehouse where postal votes were allegedly forged.

Asif Iqbal said he could not have failed to notice Coun Muhammad Afzal since he had known him from childhood.

Mr Iqbal, a losing Liberal Democrat candidate in last year's council elections, said he and two of his brothers followed Coun Afzal and two other Aston Labour candidates by car to the warehouse in Witton at midnight.

Richard Mawrey QC, a deputy high court judge sitting as election commissioner, told the fraud trial last week that the warehouse was alleged to be a "vote-forging factory" where the Labour candidates were caught sifting through 275 unsealed postal votes.

A woman police constable also identified Coun Afzal, who insists he was at home in bed and not at the midnight rendezvous at the warehouse.

Mr Iqbal said he and his brothers followed a black Primera car which they knew to be owned by Coun Afzal.

They saw him and a Labour Party agent taking what looked like bundles of ballot papers into the car.

"I am absolutely certain that was Afzal," Mr Iqbal told the court yesterday.

Naser Iqbal, the brother of Asif Iqbal and of Ayoub Khan, a losing Liberal Democrat candidate in Aston, was also in the car said to have followed Coun Afzal. Naser Iqbal told the court: "When we drove into the car park at the warehouse I saw Afzal. He had the driver's side window down and had his right arm lodged outside the window."

The two other Aston councillors, Mohammed Kazi and Mohammed Islam, admit being at the warehouse but say they were doing nothing wrong.

Police were called to the incident, which occurred two days before polling day, but took no action.

Mr Mawrey said he had to decide what the people inside the warehouse were doing there and whether their activities were lawful.

If their conduct was above board it would not have mattered if they behaved like "stage villains" and drew attention to themselves. If, on the other hand, what they were doing was wrong it would have made no difference if they arrived in a " chauffeurdriven Rolls-Royce", he said.

The court is considering two election petitions alleging widespread fraud and ballotrigging by Labour in Aston and Bordesley Green.

Counsel for the Aston Labour councillors hit back, claiming that Asif Iqbal and his brothers were part of a Liberal Democrat plot to fabricate an unsubstantiated case against Coun Afzal.

Jerry Hayes, counsel for two of the Aston Labour councillors, told the court Ayoub Khan had set out to discredit the winning candidates because he lost the election.

Mr Hayes painted a picture of Aston in June 2004. There was a degree of lawlessness and the ward could best be described as " bandit territory".

A polling clerk aged about 19 behaved improperly by attempting to pressure people into voting Liberal Democrat and putting undue pressure on the presiding officer, it was claimed.

Mr Hayes added: "If there was skulduggery and intimidation it was absolutely nothing to do with the Labour Party respondents."

The case continues.