A teenager faces a lengthy jail sentence after being caught with cocaine worth almost half a million pounds in his luggage on a flight from South America.

Ben Makriel, 19, was stopped as he walked through the "nothing to declare" channel at Gatwick after the flight from Venezuela.

A Customs officer carried out a routine search and found 4.2 kilos of the drug in his suitcase.

Makriel, of Roundstone Crescent, East Preston, told Croydon Crown Court he had only acted as a courier after a threat to torture his family and burn their house down.

He met the man in London and he offered him £2,000 to bring cocaine into the country. He told the court: "I said no and nothing more was said about it.

"But when I was in a pub in Bognor a couple of weeks later he walked in. He asked my friend Mark and me to go into his car to smoke cannabis.

"Then he drove past my family house and he told me to bring drugs in or he would torture my family and burn their house down. I thought he might kidnap them and tie them up.

"He had a gun in the glove compartment. He showed it to me and said he would shoot me in the legs."

Makriel said when he reached Caracas he was met by a man who drove him to a hotel.

He returned to the airport a week later by taxi, carrying the cocaine he had been given.

Makriel was found guilty of unlawful importation and also admitted an earlier charge of illegal importation of cannabis and 23 burglaries.

Judge Cedric Joseph told him to expect a lengthy prison sentence when he appeared in court again today.