Brit 'drug mule' teen Bella Culley gets prison release after charge
The student nurse was arrested in Tbilisi in May
A British teenage 'drug mule' has been told she will be released from prison. Bella Culley was due to be sentenced today (Monday) after she admitted to smuggling drugs into the country.
Following her arrest at the Georgian capital's international airport on May 10, the 19-year-old has served nearly six months in jail on remand.
Her family is said to have paid a fine of 500,000 Georgian Lari (£138,000) as part of a plea deal with Georgian prosecutors, the Mirror reports.
Bella's lawyer had previously said the size of the fine paid would determine the length of her sentence - with the possibility of jail time being annulled, depending on how much money was handed over.
It is understood the court originally demanded 800,000 Georgian Lari (£220,000) for her release.
The Mirror last week revealed how Mr Salakaia is still hoping to get her released from jail before she reportedly gives birth by requesting a pardon from Georgia's prime minister Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former professional footballer who played for Manchester City. If granted it would see her immediately leave Georgia.
If a presidential pardon bid failed, sources in Georgia say Bella will be transferred from jail to a nearby hospital to give birth before being allowed to raise her child behind bars. It is expected she would be given a separate special room in custody set up to accommodate her and her child’s needs.
At a previous hearing last week, Mr Salakaia had requested his client be released on bail ahead of today's sentencing hearing. But Judge Giorgi Gelashvili denied the motion telling him there were no legal grounds on which to change her conditions.
Speaking at the previous hearing Mr Salakaia said: "She pleaded guilty, fully co-operated with the investigation and the plea bargain has just been reached. So we'd like to ask the judge to release her on bail, given her advanced pregnancy."
During the same hearing, Bella was heard asking her lawyer: "Will I be able to take the baby with me if I go back to jail?". He told her: "Nobody is going to take the baby away from you".
It is not known whether she will serve all of her sentence in women's jail in Tbilisi, where she is currently being held, or if she could be released to house arrest in Georgia or extradited to the UK to serve her sentence.
Bella, a student nurse from Billingham, Teesside, went missing in Pattaya, Thailand, in May before later turning up in Georgia, which was part of the USSR until 1991. She was arrested after 11kg of cannabis and over 400g of hashish, a highly potent form of cannabis, were found in her luggage.
Bella has claimed she was forced to traffic the drugs by gangsters who branded her with an iron, showed her a video of a man being decapitated and threatened to behead her family if she refused to co-operate.
At a previous hearing in July, she claimed: "I didn't want to do this. I was forced by torture... All I wanted to do was to travel."