A NORTH-EAST man who claimed he was forced to go on a drugs run by gangsters, has been jailed for seven years after he was caught with almost £250,000 worth of Ecstasy tablets.

Raymond Griffiths, 43, was adamant that he was ordered to deliver the pills under threat of death.

But locking him up, Judge Simon Smith rejected his duress claim.

National Crime Squad detectives caught Griffiths after tracking him from his Tyneside home to Essex, where he picked up the Ectasy, a court heard.

Griffiths was arrested and found with 24,000 tablets in a holdall, in a pub at Kings Cross Station, London.

He told police that he owed some major criminals in Newcastle £10,000, and to pay off the debt he had to pick up the drugs - which he thought was cannabis - or be executed, he claimed.

The court was told how Griffiths probably picked up the drugs at the home of a man called Gary James, in Gants Hill, Essex.

James Dennison, prosecuting, said the Crown did not accept that Griffiths was acting under duress.

Judge Smith, sitting at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court, presided over a Newton Hearing to determine whether the charge of possession with intent to supply could be dropped to the lesser charge of possession.

Griffiths, of Bushaw Road, Hebburn, Tyne and Wear, admitted simple possession on the basis he was acting under duress, but as his case was not accepted, the judge was left to deal with him on the basis of intent to supply the class A drug, because of the size of the drugs haul.