A Honduran T-shirt manufacturing expert was flown to Bermuda to testify in the trial of an alleged drug mule.

The first trial of Patrick Stamp, 20, of Middle Town Road, Pembroke, ended on April 7 when a jury member was seen talking with Stamp?s family members outside court.

In Supreme Court yesterday, Stamp continued to deny importing 664.87 grams of cocaine with an estimated street value of $168,750 into the Bermuda International Airport on January 7, 2003.

The cocaine was found in four packages of Hanes T-shirts in Stamp?s luggage.

Christian Soto, plant manager at the San Pedro Sula factory in Honduras which produces and exports Hanes T-shirts to the US, agonised over the seized T-shirts as he examined their origins.

?These garments would never leave our company in these conditions,? Mr. Soto said.

And Mr. Soto revealed an Officer of the Bermuda Police Service ? Sgt. Jamiko Tucker ?also visited Honduras with the seized T-shirts.

?This is the same shirt the detective came to show me at the plant in Honduras,? he said. ?It doesn?t have a bottom hem. It used to have a bottom hem but it was cut off.?

Travel agent Dolores Simons remembered booking Stamp?s ticket to the US on December 18, 2002.

She said Stamp was travelling with Garnell Lamont Hollis, 25, of Abbot?s Cliff Drive, Hamilton ? who was sentenced to seven years in prison in April after pleading guilty to importing cocaine at the Airport on January 7.

Det. Sgt. Hayden Small of the Narcotics Department of the Bermuda Police Service testified that cocaine is sold on the streets of Bermuda in two ways.

?It is sold in half-gram wraps for $125 each,? Det. Sgt. Small said. ?It is also sold in one ounce packages containing around 28 grams for $3,000.?

The drugs expert said if the 664.87 grams of cocaine was prepared in half-gram wraps the estimated street value of the 1,350 packages would be $168,750.

However, if the cocaine was sold by the ounce, the value would be $71,100, he said.

The detective said in his experience, this amount of cocaine was not for personal use and was for sale or distribution by the defendant or someone else.

But when defence lawyer Craig Attridge asked Det. Sgt. Small whether he could know that Stamp was meant to distribute it, he admitted he did not know.

Crown counsel Anthony Blackman said Stamp left Bermuda on a commercial flight to New Jersey on December 13, 2002.

The prosecutor alleged Stamp bought clothes in New Jersey but sometime before he returned to the Island, eight packages of cocaine was placed inside the packaging of four Hanes T-shirts.

?We say the defendant was well aware those four packs of T-shirts contained cocaine,? Mr. Blackman told the eight-man, four-woman jury.

The retrial continues before Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves today.