THE trial of a Newport man facing a drug smuggling allegation ended dramatically yesterday when the jury was discharged soon after the end of the crown's case.

Roger Amos, 50, of Hillview Crescent, Pontfaen, who had conducted his own defence, now faces a retrial beginning on August 20.

Judge David Owen stopped the trial at Manchester crown court for legal reasons while Amos was addressing the jury of nine women and three men from the dock.

This was the fifth day of a trial in which Amos denied knowingly smuggling heroin into the United Kingdom on his return from a holiday in India.

The jury heard he was stopped in the nothing-to-declare channel at Manchester Airport after leaving a flight from Goa on a Sunday evening last March.

The drugs were found concealed in the lining of a black, hard-sided suitcase Amos bought for 500 rupees on a trip to Bombay while on holiday.

The heroin was 51 per cent pure and had a potential street value in the UK of just over £250,000.

Amos, in a tape recorded interview the following day, exercised his right not to answer questions.

By then he had consulted a solicitor, who was with him during the interview in the custody suite at the airport.

His solicitor read a prepared statement in which Amos insisted he had no knowledge drugs were in the suitcase and was "horrified" to learn they had been found in his luggage.

Amos - given bail by a High Court judge shortly before his trial - was again given conditional bail.