A CONVICTED drugs smuggler who hanged himself in his cell was awaiting trial for his part in a £30m cocaine trafficking ring, it was revealed yesterday.

John Shutt, of Kelsey House, Front Street, Kelloe, near Durham, was one of the key figures in a bid to import more than 70lb of near-pure cocaine into the UK.

Restrictions on reporting the case were only lifted yesterday after a series of related trials came to an end.

Shutt hanged himself from his cell toilet with a bootlace in London's Belmarsh Prison in September 2000 - a day after his application for bail was turned down.

The 53-year-old had been on remand for 18 months while he awaited trial for his part in planning to bring the drugs back from Holland.

The former lorry driver had a previous conviction for his conspiring to smuggle a tonne of cannabis resin into Britain from Spain.

The man behind the cocaine plot, millionaire racehorse owner and former policeman Graham Piper, was jailed for 14 years in July 2000.

At his trial at the Old Bailey in London, the court heard how Piper had travelled around Belgium and Holland with brown paper bags stuffed full of cash, to pay off his Colombian suppliers.

But he was careful not to personally handle the drugs and left that to Shutt and another man, Leslie Churchill.

The gang was caught after the National Crime Squad teamed up with Dutch police. A surveillance team watched Shutt and Churchill in Holland as they exchanged packages from their cars.

Shutt was arrested after he landed at Newcastle Airport.

Investigators said the drug seized was more than 98 per cent pure - making it one of the strongest batches of cocaine ever recovered in the UK.