A Saudi Arabian prince used his private Boeing 727 to smuggle $15 million (£7.6 million) of Colombian cocaine into France under the cover of diplomatic immunity, a court was told yesterday.

Prince Nayef Bin Fawaz al-Shaalan, a member of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, has been accused, along with ten others, of organising a vast drug-trafficking operation. If convicted, he faces ten years’ imprisonment and a ban from setting foot on French soil after serving his sentence.

The Prince was not in court and is reported to be in Saudi Arabia, but his lawyer, Maître Jacques Vergès, denied the charges against him. Hélène Langlois, the State Prosecutor, asked the court in Bobigny, north of Paris, for an international warrant for his arrest. None of the other defendants was present in court either.

The case has strained relations between France and Saudi Arabia, according to media reports.

A confidential French diplomatic note leaked to the media said that the affair was being treated as a “priority” in Riyadh and was likely “to have a negative impact on our common interests”.

Prince Nayef, a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch, Abdulaziz, is accused of involvement in the plot to import two tonnes of cocaine into France in 1999.

The court was told that police discovered the drugs in 66 Samsonite suitcases in a house in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec after a tip-off.

Informants told detectives that the cocaine had been flown from Colombia, via the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on board the Prince’s Boeing 727 and arrived at Le Bourget airport, north of Paris. French Customs officers did not inspect the baggage because the Prince, who was on board the flight, had diplomatic immunity, the court was told.

Didier Dubreucq, a French underworld figure nicknamed Blue Eyes, who has already been found guilty of trafficking in connection with the case, was responsible for distributing the drugs, police said.

Prince Nayef is alleged to have made contact with the Medellin drug cartel through a Colombian woman whom he met while he was studying at the University of Miami during the 1970s and 1980s.

French prosecutors claim that he met members of the cartel in Marbella, Spain, but admit that they are unsure as to why a wealthy Saudi prince would run the risk of involving himself in a drug deal.

Three of the ten defendants, Oscar Campuzano, Carlos Ramon and Juan Usuga, all Colombian, were convicted in Miami after an investigation into the operation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Its evidence formed the backbone of the French prosecution case presented in court.

The Prince has claimed that the talks in Marbella were part of an innocent business deal and said that he broke them off as soon as he discovered that his contacts were linked to the Medellin cartel.

In an interview last year, he said that he was the victim of a plot to discredit him, hatched by the American authorities.

His lawyer said yesterday: “The court is being asked to convict a man who has never been seen or interviewed here, and who is accused on the basis of statements by men who the French justice system has not seen or interviewed either.”

The court in Bobigny was expected to suspend its sentence last night.

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