In brief
Bella Culley, an 19-year-old from the UK, is imprisoned in Georgia on drug smuggling charges. After transferring to a 'mother and baby' unit, she enjoys improved living conditions, allowing her to cook and care for her baby. Despite the dire circumstances, Bella's family continues to support her as they navigate the legal challenges ahead. Raised funds may reduce her sentence, but she awaits final sentencing at the Tbilisi City Court.
A British teenager - eight months pregnant and charged with drugs smuggling - is awaiting sentencing in prison in Georgia, South Caucasus. A payment of £137,000 by her family will reduce her sentence but what are the days like for Bella Culley, incarcerated 2,600 miles (4,180km) from home?Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Bella Culley's mother reveals her daughter - now 35 weeks pregnant - has been transferred to a prison mother and baby unit. This marks a significant change for the 19-year-old after five months in a cell in Georgia's Rustavi Prison Number Five, with only a hole in the ground for a toilet, one hour of fresh air daily, and communal showers twice a week.Lyanne Kennedy says her daughter has been boiling pasta in a kettle and toasting bread over a candle flame but is now allowed to cook for herself and other women and children in the unit, and is learning Georgian. She now gets two hours out for walking, she can use the communal kitchen, has a shower in her room and a proper toilet, she says, describing the improved conditions since a transfer earlier this month. They all cook for each other, Ms Kennedy says. Bella has been making eggy bread and cheese toasties, and salt and pepper chicken.Miss Culley has been held in pre-trial detention since May, after police discovered 12kg (26lb) of marijuana and 2kg (4.4lb) of hashish in her hold luggage at Tbilisi International Airport.In September, Georgian media widely published an open letter they said had been sent from prison by Anastasia Zinovkina, a Russian political activist sentenced to eight-and-a-half years on drug possession charges. Ms Zinovkina, who insisted the drugs were planted on her, described the sanitary conditions as appalling and horrific.The case has drawn attention to Georgia's strict approach to drug-related offences and its extensive use of plea bargaining to resolve criminal cases. Guram Imnadze, a criminal justice lawyer and drug policy expert based in Tbilisi, says in 2024 nearly 90% of drug-related crimes in Georgia were resolved in this way. Miss Culley's case coincided with a new interior minister taking office, who made drug crimes a priority.Miss Culley claimed she had been tortured and forced to carry the drugs but was warned she was facing 20 years in prison. But, for a substantial sum, she could be released, she was told. Back in Tbilisi City Court last Tuesday, the teenager heard her family had managed to raise £137,000. Not the amount needed for her to walk free but enough to reduce her sentence significantly, to two years. She is due in court again on Monday to hear her final sentence.Ms Kennedy says the family is doing everything they can to get her home where she should be.
