The family of a British woman detained at Tbilisi airport with a large quantity of drugs has paid the Georgian state £137,000 to reduce her sentence to two years as part of a plea bargain, the BBC reports.
Bella May Culley, 19, from Billingham, is 35 weeks pregnant and faced up to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment in Georgia on charges of drug smuggling.
“More than 90% of drug-related crimes in Georgia are resolved through plea bargains,” the BBC writes.
The girl’s mother, Leanne Kennedy, is in Tbilisi. In an interview with journalists, she confirmed that the money for the plea bargain had already been transferred.
However, the girl’s family was unable to raise enough money for her full release, and Bella Culley will likely give birth in prison.
Culley was studying to be a nurse in college. In the spring of this year, she went on a trip with friends to the Philippines and then to Thailand, where she lost contact with her family. She flew to Tbilisi on a flight from Sharjah (UAE) in May this year. During a search of her luggage, 12 kg of marijuana and 2 kg of hashish were found. Culley claims that before that, she was tortured in Thailand to force her to transport the drugs. Culley was 18 years old at the time of her arrest in Tbilisi and turned 19 in the Rustavi women’s prison.
According to her lawyer, the girl sought help from local law enforcement agencies in Thailand, but to no avail — she was returned to the group that forced her to transport drugs. The lawyer claims that his client was intimidated and tortured with a hot iron, and that there were traces of torture on her hands at the time of her arrest in Tbilisi.
Lawyer Malkhaz Salakaya also said he plans to appeal to the Georgian president for a pardon.