After pleading guilty to smuggling drugs into Georgia and making a hefty payment to cut her jail time, Bella Culley, a 19-year-old British student was set to board a flight home Monday. Prosecutors decided she should be released immediately as part of a plea bargain and the fact she was expected to give birth within weeks. File photo by Mike Theiler/UPI | License Photo
Authorities in Georgia set pregnant British teen Bella Culley free Monday six months after she was arrested at Tbilisi International Airport and charged with smuggling 26 pounds of marijuana and more than four pounds of hashish in her luggage.
Culley, 19, who is from Billingham in the northeast of England, was allowed to walk free from court after prosecutors made a last-minute change to a plea deal and decided, taking into account her age and advanced pregnancy, she should be released.
As part of the plea bargain, Culley pleaded guilty to smuggling the drugs from Thailand via the United Arab Emirates, for which she could have been handed a prison sentence as long as 20 years.
Instead, her passport will be returned and she will be free to leave Georgia, according to her lawyer, Malkhaz Salakaia.
Following an emotional reunion with her mother, Lyanne Kennedy, outside court, Culley said she was “happy and relieved” to be out of prison.
Her family paid more than $180,000 to Georgian auhtorities last week to get her sentence cut to two years.
Culley contended that gangsters forced her to carry the drugs by torturing her with hot iron, with Salakaia saying her claim was the subject of a separate investigation by Georgian authorities.
Her family reported her as having gone missing on May 3 while backpacking in Thailand, a week before she showed up 4,000 miles away in Tbilisi.
Back in July, Culley denied the charges, arguing she had been coerced, that she was a university student and a person of good character who didn’t use drugs and just wanted to see the world.
She showed scarring on her right wrist to the judge in the case.
Salakaia reiterated his determination to lobby Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili to pardon Culley.
Culley, who is 35 weeks pregnant, was detained throughout in harsh conditions in the country’s Soviet-era Rustavi Prison Number 5 and only transferred to a prison “mother and baby” unit over the weekend.
