A smuggler has been jailed for 15 years after carrying cocaine worth £1.5 million through Gatwick.

Francesco Ferrera, 31, was caught with three guitar amplifiers packed with 19.2kg of the drug, which was 100 per cent pure.

He had been waiting for a connecting flight to Madrid at the South Terminal when Customs officers stopped him.

They discovered the drugs when they took the amplifiers apart.

The haul is believed to have been one of the biggest quantities of cocaine smuggled into the airport.

Ferrera, who lives in Seville and speaks no English, flew to the Caribbean to collect the drugs.

He was on his way back to Spain and had flown from Tobago to Gatwick to catch the connecting flight when he was arrested on December 9 last year.

At first he denied any knowledge of the drugs.

He claimed he had flown to the Caribbean and bought the amplifiers for US$500 while wandering around the shops in Trinidad, intending to use them at a fiesta when he returned home. But at Lewes Crown Court he admitted smuggling the class A drug.

The court heard he had been tempted by the promise of a payment of 20,000 - about £13,000 - from a man he met at a fiesta.

He said he needed the money because his catering business had failed and he also wanted to help his sister, whose 11-year-old son was dying of leukaemia.

Judge Charles Kemp told him: "This is a very grave case indeed.

"Cocaine is a wicked and pernicious drug which can and often does blight and ruin the lives of those who become dependent on it. I have no doubt there is a ready market for it in Spain and you sought to take advantage for your own personal gain.

"Your reasons for getting involved in this enterprise are indeed tragic.

"I accept you were naive. You were expecting a modest payment for a very high risk you ran on behalf of the criminals who traffic these drugs.

"But the courts of this country regard this offence as particularly serious because anybody involved in the trafficking of this drug, albeit only as a courier, ultimately has no control over its final destination and no way of preventing the havoc and misery large quantities of it can wreak in people's lives."

Oscar Del Fabro, defending, said Ferrera, who has no previous convictions and has hardly travelled out of his home country, had been foolish.

He said Ferrera had been left with financial problems after his fiance, who was also his business partner, left him and took the company's money with her.

Ferrera's sister, with whom he lived, was also asking for money.

Two months before his arrest he met a South American man in Seville who tempted him into becoming a drugs courier.

Mr Del Fabro said: "He has no connection with drugs. He did not know what drugs were involved.

"He was a courier and nothing more. There is no hint he was involved in the distribution of the drugs.

"He is devastated about what has happened to him. He feels he brought shame on his family."

He said Ferrera felt lonely and isolated in jail as he could not speak any English and had no support from family nearby.

After the hearing, a spokeswoman for Customs and Excise said: "The length of sentence should act as a deterrent to those who think drug smuggling is an easy way to make money."

Before Ferrera's arrest, one of the largest hauls of cocaine discovered by Customs at Gatwick was cocaine worth £1.2 million, found in the suitcases of a man travelling from Barbados in August last year.

In July last year a British Airways steward was jailed for 16 years for his role in a plot to smuggle cocaine worth £360,000 through Gatwick.