A FORMER trainee supermarket manager from Abingdon faces up to 15 years in one of the world’s toughest prisons after being charged with trying to smuggle cocaine out of Peru.

Nathan Brandon is awaiting trial after being arrested at Lima airport when officers discovered between 12kg and 18kg of Peruvian Flake cocaine in his luggage.

The drugs have a UK street value of more than £1m.

The Foreign Office said the 21-year-old was arrested with another man, who is believed to be in his late 30s and from Faringdon.

A spokesman confirmed the pair were receiving “consular assistance”, but a spokesman did not know when they would face a judge.

Both men are expected to stand trial in the next two months and could be sent to the infamous Lurigancho jail if convicted.

Last night sources close to Brandon claimed he had been tricked into carrying drugs home during the incident in April.

Brandon is said to be “suffering terribly” in the Sarita Colonia men’s prison in Callao, where he is being held.

The former Oxford and Cherwell Valley College student was training to be a section manager at the Abingdon branch of Tesco before flying out to Peru last year.

A family member told us: “We are all in absolute shock, and don’t really have any idea what’s going on. The first anybody knew was when the embassy called with the news.

“Nathan is a hard working lad from a good family and this is completely out of character. He has never been in trouble with the police and was forging a career for himself. Nothing in this situation adds up.

“We have got no information about what is happening to him, which is dreadful.”

Peru’s prisons are renowned as some of the harshest in the world.

Lurigancho, in Lima, is considered the worst and is plagued with riots, violence, malnutrition and disease.

A page on the Bebo social networking site, created by Brandon, revealed he had been looking to secure a transfer to a Tesco in Blackpool.

Calling himself skylinebrandon, he wrote in spring last year: “I’m just about to get a transfer sorted out and then I’m buying two flats in Blackpool.”

A family friend said: “We have looked at the conditions in this prison on the Internet and they are dreadful. We know he’s suffering terribly.

“Everything in Peru is so slow. He was arrested in April and still nobody knows when his trial is.

“The authorities tried to make him sign a document in Spanish early on, which he refused to.”

Brandon has been given a state appointed lawyer because it would cost a six-figure sum to send out a British solicitor.

The friend added: “We’re terrified he won’t get a fair trial because there is no guarantee he will have an interpreter. Nobody is saying Nathan is an angel, but we have no doubt whatsoever he has been tricked into this.”

Peru is the world’s second biggest producer of cocaine, behind Colombia.

Nobody from the Peruvian embassy in London has returned our calls.