A DRUGS courier caught with heroin worth £150,000 in his hired car was yesterday jailed for seven years.

Shazad Ali, 26, was shadowed by Stockton drugs squad detectives after he picked up the Renault Laguna at Teesside Airport.

He returned three hours later from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, with one-and-a-half kilos of heroin in the rear footwell.

Ali had been followed to Rotherham, where he called at a kitchen saleroom.

A marked police car stopped him on the A19, near Crathorne, not far from Yarm, and officers seized the drugs, said Martina Connelly, prosecuting.

She told Teesside Crown Court that Ali said he had been threatened by individuals who had a vendetta against him because he wanted to stop being a drugs courier.

Jonnie Walker, defending, said Ali was a highly intelligent, industrious man who got himself out of his depth by ingratiating himself with people in the drugs trade.

Ali, of Pearson Walk, Stockton, pleaded guilty to possession of a Class A drug, heroin, with intent to supply it on January 15.