A man accused of importing cocaine has shared details of his tangled love life with the jury and explained away his Police statements, saying he was suffering from heroin withdrawal.

Shannon Dwayne Julian Tucker gave the unusual information in a bid to explain his movements and actions during a period in which it is alleged he conspired with his nephew Jahmiko Hayward, 22, to bring $236,500 of the drug into Bermuda.

The prosecution case against the pair is that they plotted between March and April 2004 to import the cocaine hidden in a shipment of car parts from St. Martin in the Netherlands Antilles. Supreme Court has heard from Crown witnesses how two packages were intercepted at Bermuda International Airport by the Police in 2004.

The first contained side rails for a vehicle and the second a bumper with cocaine hidden inside. The cocaine was removed from the bumper and replaced with a dummy package by the Police, before both packages were put back into circulation with courier DHL.

Hayward was arrested on April 5, 2004 after picking up the bumper from DHL in Hamilton and Tucker was arrested in January 2005 after returning from more than a year in St. Martin.

Tucker, who has elected to defend himself, told the jury he left for St. Martin immediately after being released from Westgate where he had been locked up twice over child support matters.

He left Hayward to settle his affairs in Bermuda, and to take care of his Pit Bull dogs at his home in Broken Hill Lane, Smiths. Tucker told the jury he had been going out with a lady named Malika Robertson when he left Bermuda, who owned a Suzuki vehicle.

He explained that, having borrowed money from her before he left, he wanted to send her the car parts from St. Martin.

Tucker further said that he was a heroin addict while in St. Martin. He claimed he made assumptions about his nephew's role in events during a Police interview after his arrest as he was suffering withdrawal from the drug.

Both Tucker and Hayward deny conspiring to import drugs, and the trial, which enters its third week on Monday, continues.