YORK plane spotter Andy Jenkins was today back in the Greek town where he will face a court on spying charges.

Air enthusiast Andy, 32, was among the 12 Britons who flew back to Greece yesterday to face a trial for accessing state secrets.

The group arrived in Kalamata earlier today. It was in the picturesque seaside town in the south-west Peloponnese that the group was arrested in November last year while on a plane spotting holiday, and accused of spying at an air base owned by the Hellenic Air Force.

Their trial is expected to start tomorrow, and a verdict is anticipated within two to three days.

The group's leader, Paul Coppin, of Mildenhall, in Suffolk, today predicted they would be acquitted.

Speaking at Athens airport, Mr Coppin, 57, said the group had done nothing wrong and claimed the evidence would back that up in the forthcoming trial.

He said he was not anxious about returning and remained confident that the group would be acquitted.

He said: "I was talking to my wife on the plane and she was wondering if they would have us back next year. We would have to have a proviso written in saying we would not be arrested.

"We won't have to go back to jail. We could be found guilty and we could get a suspended prison sentence, but I don't believe we will have to go back to prison.

"We didn't do anything wrong. As long as everybody sees the evidence in court, then I shouldn't think there will be any problems."

His wife, Lesley, confessed she did have some misgivings about returning to the country where they were held in jail for almost six weeks last year.

She said: "Logically, I know we have a good case but you always worry that something could go wrong."

Her husband added: "We hope to prove that plane spotting is a popular hobby in the UK, and that there was really no reason to arrest us in the first place."

They were originally charged with gathering information to pass on to an enemy of Greece, which carried a maximum prison sentence of 25 years.

But that was reduced to a single "misdemeanour" charge of illegal information collection, which has a maximum penalty of five years, or a hefty fine. The 12 were allowed to return to Britain in December last year after paying bail of more than £9,000 each but knew they would have to return to Greece for the trial. Many of them have gone into debt since their arrest because of their bail money and their legal bill, which has already topped £3,000 each.

Their defence will claim that the secret information they were accused of gathering is freely available in books and on the Internet.

Updated: 15:08 Tuesday, April 23, 2002