A lorry driver has gone on trial accused of passing on 22 kilos of heroin during an alleged hand-over in a car park.

A jury at Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday how plain-clothes officers had been keeping observation on a suspect when he met 40-year-old Neil Dibb behind the Readmans store in Birkenshaw.

Prosecutor Howard Crowson described how the two men parked their Land Rovers alongside each other's making it difficult to see what they were doing from elsewhere in the car park.

Officers in a nearby vehicle described seeing Dibb and the other man talking to each other before going to the rear of their vehicles and opening the doors.

Two officers told the jury how they saw the men moving between both vehicles, and although they were unable to see anything being carried the impression was that they were taking something from one Land Rover to the other.

Mr Crowson said Dibb and the other man drove away and when officers stopped the second man's Land Rover in Sticker Lane, Bradford, he was found to have two holdalls in the rear containing 21.8 kilos of the Class A drug. It was divided up into 22 separate packages with 11 in each holdall.

Dibb, of Hodgson Lane, Drighlington, was arrested later the same day. In his vehicle officers found a briefcase containing more than £8,000 in cash.

A search of his farm premises revealed a further £8,000 in a safe and it was discovered that his lorry had been fitted with two concealed compartments under the trailer.

Mr Crowson said that a few days before the alleged hand-over in January Dibb had made a return trip from Dover to Dunkirk in the lorry.

He said microscopic and chemical tests indicated a match between metal fragments in the false cylinders fitted to Dibb's lorry and packaging around the heroin.

"It is this piece of evidence which the prosecution rely upon scientifically to make you sure what had been observed in the Readmans car park was a hand-over of drugs," he told the jury.

After his arrest Dibb confessed that the false compartments were to be used for smuggling but said he had only been involved in smuggling cigarettes.

In a police interview he said he had been doing that for about a year and had sold imported cigarettes to the other man whom he knew only as 'Paul'.

Dibb claimed that he had only met him in the car park to discuss a future sale of cigarettes and to have a drink.

Dibb has pleaded not guilty to a charge of supplying heroin.

The trial continues.