THE jury in the trial of a Birkby man accused of opium smuggling will resume their deliberations today.

Ibrahim Yusif, 33, was arrested last July after five kilos of the Class A drug were sent in a package to the home of his then girlfriend in Langdale Drive, Dalton.

The drugs, worth £30,000, were hidden inside five ornate clocks in the package.

The opium had been discovered by parcel by customs officers at East Midlands Airport, who sent an undercover police officer to deliver the package to Dalton two days later.

Yusif, of Scholes Road, has denied a charge of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of the prohibition on importing the drug.

Yusif declined to give evidence himself, but in her closing speech to the jury at Bradford Crown Court, his barrister Rukhshanda Hussain claimed it was hardly a water-tight prosecution case.

The court has heard that Yusif had been expecting a package from Greece which he believed would contain clothes, gold and shoes.

But he denied having any knowledge of the parcel containing the opium.

Miss Hussain said if her client had been expecting a drugs delivery, he would have been “a nervous wreck” when it arrived.

She suggested that he would have been keeping vigil at his girlfriend's home, but on the day the parcel arrived he was doing some decorating at his house and helping a friend to fix his car.

She said: “'Not the actions of a drug importer.”

The court heard during the trial that the package was addressed to Yusif's girlfriend Cheryl Page and Miss Hussain submitted that the chance of her opening it would have been “quite a risk to take” for the importer.

She also pointed out that Yusif's home and belongings were searched and there was no other evidence linking him to drugs.

“It’s not enough if you think he might have done or could have done it. You have to be sure”, she said.

The jury spent just over an hour considering the evidence in the case yesterday and will resume discussions this morning.