build_tablinks escapes HTML unchangeable

It's currently not possible to use HTML in Quicktabs tabs, because of

/**
   * Build the actual tab links, with appropriate href, title and attributes.
   *
   * @param $active_tab The index of the active tab.
   */
  protected function build_tablinks($active_tab) {
    $tabs = array();
    $qt_name = $this->quickset->getName();
    foreach ($this->quickset->getContents() as $i => $tab) {
      if (!empty($tab)) {
	// If we use l() here or a render array of type 'link', the '#' symbol will
	// be escaped. Sad panda is sad.
	$href = '#qt-'. $qt_name .'-ui-tabs' . ($i+1);
	$tablink = array(
	  '#markup' => '<a href="'. $href .'">'. check_plain($this->quickset->translateString($tab->getTitle(), 'tab', $i)) .'</a>',
	);
	$tabs[$i] = $tablink;
      }
    }
    return $tabs;
  }

in QuickUiTabs.inc.

There already were other issues where HTML code was required for the tabs and this could be solved using template overrides, but this seems unsolvable in a clean way, doesn't it?

I think the check_plain is a bit to early?