A young Libyan national standing trial over the importation of 1.5 kilos of heroin insisted yesterday he had no idea there were drugs hidden inside a false bottom of his luggage.

Bedredeen Elghangha, 27, explained that before leaving Tunisia for Malta he had swapped his backpack for the luggage after a friend asked him to exchange. The friend, who was meant to travel to Malta with him, told Mr Elghangha something had cropped up and he could not make the flight. He thus needed a smaller bag so he would not have to carry his larger luggage around.

Mr Elghangha said he reluctantly accepted to swap because the luggage was too big for him. He added he never suspected there were drugs hidden inside, adding he was just as surprised as the Customs' officers who discovered the heroin on his arrival in Malta.

"I swear this is the truth," he said through an interpreter. "If I were guilty I'd tell you," he told jurors, adding: "I did not import the drugs... I don't need the money. I have my own business back home in Libya...

"I never suspected they would do this to me... put drugs in my bag. I had seen these things in films but never imagined it would happen to me."

Mr Elghangha is pleading not guilty to conspiring to deal in 1.5 kilos of heroin and to importing and trafficking in the drug on April 26, 2007.

The prosecution, conducted by lawyer Lara Lanfranco from the Attorney General's Office, alleges that Mr Elghangha was aware that the luggage contained the heroin, which had a market value of between €69,000 and €107,000.

Testifying in his own defence, Mr Elghangha insisted he was innocent.

Before he was arrested in April 2007, he was a student at a Libyan University and owned a hair salon and a perfumery there. He said he had been to Malta about seven times before the incident.

In April 2007, he visited to remove the tattoo depicting an eagle on his left arm because he did not manage to get it erased in Tunisia.

During his brief stay in Tunisia, he said he met a man called Adel Wadi, who he knew from Malta. Mr Wadi, a Libyan national too, invited him over to an apartment in Tunis with friends. One of the people there was a certain Jamal.

Sometime later, Mr Wadi told him that something had cropped up for Jamal and he needed a smaller luggage. Jamal asked Mr Elghangha to change his backpack for Jamal's larger luggage and the accused said he accepted.

Mr Wadi told Mr Elghangha that, while in Malta, he could stay at his rented apartment and that another friend, Khalid, would pick him up from the airport. Mr Wadi also told him that if he did not like the luggage he could change it for another one in his apartment.

On arrival in Malta, Customs officers stopped him as he passed his luggage through an X-Ray machine. He was then taken into a room and officials drilled a small hole in his emptied luggage. Dust started trickling out of the luggage and officials asked him whether it was drugs. He knew nothing about it but told them Khalid was waiting for him outside and they might want to speak to him.

Mr Elghangha's lawyer, Joseph Mifsud, pointed at his client's neck and asked him to explain the scars.

"I am innocent but I ended up staying in jail... I tried to end my life," he said. He explained that he had tried to kill himself in prison three times. He was now on medication.

Earlier, court expert Mario Mifsud explained he had analysed the powder found in the luggage. Inside a black plastic bag was a large quantity of light brown power. It resulted to be 1,450 grammes of heroin.

Outside the bag, there was loose dark powder that turned out to be 25 grammes of caffeine. Caffeine, he explained, was commonly used to distract police dogs from sniffing the drugs.

The trial continues this morning.