The family of a pregnant British teenager held on drug smuggling charges in Georgia has paid £138,000 in a plea bargain deal that could result in a two-year jail sentence, potentially forcing her to give birth in prison.
Bella Culley, a 19-year-old student nurse from Billingham, Teesside, was arrested at Tbilisi airport in May after being stopped with 14kg of cannabis worth £200,000 in her travel bag. She had been travelling in south-east Asia and was reported missing in Pattaya, Thailand.
At a court hearing in Tbilisi on Tuesday, Culley's mother, Lyanne Kennedy, said the family had raised 500,000 lari (£137,870) and were waiting for the funds to be credited to the relevant government account. The family had initially aimed to raise £225,000 to secure her immediate release, but prosecutors and defence lawyers agreed a deal for the lesser amount in exchange for a two-year sentence.
Culley, who had previously pleaded not guilty, changed her plea to guilty on Tuesday. She asked the judge: "Will I be able to take the baby with me if I go back to jail?" The judge responded: "Nobody is going to take the baby away from you." Prosecutor Vakhtang Tsalugelashvili confirmed the plea bargain, stating: "Our conditions have been met – two years of imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 Georgian lari."
The sentence is due to be handed down on Monday 3 November. One possibility is that Culley is permitted to have her baby while under house arrest, rather than inside the women's prison. An application for bail was refused on medical grounds that her conditions were "satisfactory".
Culley's mother said of her daughter: "She's looking big, pregnant, but she looks strong." Culley had previously claimed she was tortured into taking the drugs to a country she had never heard of, stating: "I just wanted to travel. I am a good person."
