A Customs officer described to a Supreme Court jury yesterday how he found eight pouches of cocaine inside four packs of Hanes T-shirts in a 20-year-old Pembroke man?s luggage.

Patrick Newton Stamp from Middle Town Road is charged with importing and possessing 664.87 grams of cocaine with a street value of $168,750 on January 7, 2003.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Detective Constable Jamiko Tucker told the court yesterday how on the afternoon of January 7, 2003 he randomly stopped Stamp at Bermuda International Airport to search his luggage.

Stamp had just landed on the Continental flight from New Jersey.

Det. Con.Tucker said Stamp identified the two pieces of luggage as his own and that he had been travelling from Newark with ?Lamont? and his girlfriend.

Det. Con. Tucker said he searched Stamp?s luggage, including a duffel bag and found five large shopping bags from Forman Mills, a clothing factory outlet in New Jersey.

He said inside the bag were various sealed bags of clothing including Hanes T-shirts, socks and briefs.

Det. Con. said he became suspicious when one of the bags containing T-shirts ?felt a little heavier than normal?.

He said he asked Stamp if he could open the package to which Stamp pleaded ?come on Niko, why you gotta open it??

?I asked him why I couldn?t open it and he replied that it was brand new.?

Det. Con. Tucker said he became even more suspicious when he ?felt a groove? running down the centre of the bag.

He said he proceeded to open it and found two rectangular packages taped to the cardboard that the T-shirts were wrapped around.

?It was my belief that these packages contained a controlled drug. I pointed them out to him and asked him what he could tell me about them and he said he didn?t know and that he had bought it from the store like that.?

He said it was then that he arrested Stamp on suspicion of importing a controlled drug and cautioned him before summoning another custom officer.

Det. Con. Tucker said it was at this point that another officer notified him that another man was enquiring about Stamp.

The man turned out to be co-accused Garnell Lamont Hollis, 25, of Abbot?s Cliff Drive, Hamilton, who was also arrested on January 7 at the Airport. He has since pleaded guilty to a charge of importing cocaine. He was remanded in custody pending sentence.

Det. Con. Tucker asked Hollis to wait with officers while he resumed the search on Stamp?s luggage and found an additional three Hanes T-shirt packs containing similar pouches of what he believed to be a controlled drug.

Stamp?s lawyer, Craig Attridge, asked Det. Con. Tucker to compare the barcodes on the T-shirt packages with a receipt found with Stamp?s travel documents.

When he did this in court, Det. Con. Tucker could not find the barcodes on the receipt ? neither could he find the barcodes of any of the other items which had been in the same Forman Mills shopping bag inside Stamp?s luggage. Det. Con. Tucker then confirmed that two Forman Mills shopping bags had been found in Hollis? luggage.

As to Stamp?s demeanour during the search, Mr. Attridge asked Det. Con. Tucker if Stamp did not merely appear ?vexed? because he had been in the Customs search area for almost half an hour before the drugs were allegedly found in his luggage.

Det. Con. Tucker could neither deny nor confirm that he had in fact been searching Stamp?s bags for almost 30 minutes before finding any drugs.

Mr. Attridge said the reason his client remained silent when the drugs were found was because he was ?in shock? as he did not know they were there. Mr. Attridge also pointed out that while the T-shirt packs stated that each contained three T-shirts, there were only two in each of the packs drugs were found in.

The case resumes before Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves this morning.