A North East tourist has told of his holiday hell after he was arrested in Tunisia after being mistaken for a convicted cigarette smuggler.

James Colley, 57, known as Jim, jetted off on a package holiday to the North African nation with wife Louise, 51, on August 2 to celebrate his retirement from Nissan in Washington.

But he was quizzed by armed police when he landed at Enfidha-Hammamet International Airport and then told to report to a court in the capital, Tunis.

Baffled Jim later learnt that cops were actually looking for a man called James Coyle, convicted in his absence of smuggling cigarettes into the country in 2012. 

When Jim finally went before a judge on the last day of their holiday the case was dropped against him in seconds, because the charges were "too old".

Speaking about his ordeal, dad-of-three Jim said: "I’m quite a calm person, but honestly, you don’t argue with someone with a gun… You’ve got no idea – are they trigger-happy? It was absolutely terrifying.

The couple booked their week-long package holiday following Jim's retirement as a Nissan car plant worker earlier this year.

James and Louise.James and Louise. (Image: SWNS)

They paid £1,400 to stay at the five-star rated El Mouradi hotel, in Mahdia. But they never got to enjoy its facilities and had to make trips to Tunis instead.

Jim said: “They kept on taking my passport away and asking us the same two questions: Had I been to Tunisia before and where did I work?

“I said I’d ‘only been once on my honeymoon in 2009.’ They didn’t believe us, they said, ‘You’ve been before.’

“They had guns, and you don’t argue with someone with a gun.

“They then got an interpreter down, and he basically said, ‘You’re going to have an invitation to appear in court'.”

On August 5, at 4am, they paid a local man to drive them four hours to Tunis along the Trans-African Highway in a beaten-up VW polo for the court appearance. James remembered how the building looked like a “1960s bank” with “paper files piled high everywhere” and all the staff smoking.

James and Louise with their driver.James and Louise with their driver. (Image: SWNS)

After he arrived, he was presented with a court document, which bizarrely named him incorrectly as ‘James Coyle’.

Jim added: “In this court, they said ‘English?’ I said yes. And then they said, ‘You need to sign this’... But it had the wrong name on it.

“They took us into another room, and there was a superior guy, and he said, ‘So you are innocent then?' I thought that would be the end of it. 

“But he said, ‘You need to come to the police station tomorrow to hand this form in.’ I said, where’s the police station?’ It was in Tunis again.”

(Image: SWNS)

The couple went to the 'sweltering' local police station the next day - with James then told he needed to appear before a judge at the courthouse on August 8.

“I had to stand with my hands behind my back, my head bowed in front of these three judges. There were police officers with their guns. 

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Fearful Jim said he was unsure which way the case was going to go and was deeply worried he may be fined or end up in prison. 

But within 30 seconds, he said one of the judges had “waved their hand in the air” and an usher came and whispered to him: “It’s all over, you’re free to go.”

The astonished couple later learned from their hastily formed legal team that the case should never have gone ahead due to the age of the offence.

Jim said: “Basically, what they knew all along was that the case was for cigarette smuggling in 2012. This James Coyle was convicted in his absence. 

“Because the case was over five years old, it just got thrown out anyway – not the fact that it wasn’t even me, mistaken identity.”

The Tunisian Embassy in London has been contacted for comment.