Pregnant Bella Cully “toasts bread by candlelight” in a Georgian prison

A British teenager – eight months pregnant and accused of drug smuggling – is awaiting sentence in a prison in Georgia, in the South Caucasus. A £137,000 payment from her family will reduce her sentence, but what are the days like for Bella Cully, locked up 2,600 miles (4,180 km) from home?

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Bella Culley’s mother revealed that her daughter – now 35 weeks pregnant – has been moved to a prison ‘mother and baby’ unit.

It marks a significant change for the 19-year-old after five months in a cell at Georgia’s number five prison in Rustavi, with only a hole in the ground for a toilet, one hour of fresh air each day and communal showers twice a week.

Leanne Kennedy says her daughter used to boil pasta in a kettle and toast bread by candlelight, but is now allowed to cook for herself and the other women and children in the ward and is learning Georgian.

“Now she gets two hours outside for a walk, can use the communal kitchen, has a shower in her room and a proper toilet,” she says, describing the improved conditions since the move earlier this month.

“Everybody cooks for each other,” says Kennedy. “Bella makes egg bread and cheese toasties, and salt and pepper chicken.”

Miss Culley has been held in pre-trial detention since May after police found 12kg (26lb) of marijuana and 2kg (4.4lb) of hashish in her luggage at Tbilisi International Airport.

Some accounts from inside the prison paint a stark picture of the conditions.

In September, Georgian media widely published an open letter it said was sent from prison by Anastasia Zinovkina, a Russian political activist sentenced to eight and a half years on drug charges.

Ms Zinovkina, who insisted she was drugged, described the sanitary conditions as “appalling” and “appalling”.

“A single bar of soap is used to wash hair, body, socks, underwear and dishes,” she writes. “If the soap runs out before the guards decide to give a new one (which happens once every three months), then they just don’t wash.

“Toilet paper is provided once a month and only to those who have no money in their prison account. Bathing is only allowed twice a week – Wednesday and Sunday – for 15 minutes each.”

“Girls who don’t have slippers bathe barefoot or use common slippers. They get fungus and pass it on.”

Georgia’s Ministry of Justice told the BBC in May that prison conditions had improved significantly following previous monitoring reports by the Georgian public defender.

Under Georgia’s new prison code, which went into effect last January, inmates “have the right to fresh air for at least one hour a day,” the statement said.

He also highlighted various reforms, including vocational education programs, a digital university for distance learning and improved health care through an online clinic.

“Georgian authorities put a person-centered approach at the heart of penitentiary reform to ensure healthy management of the prison system,” it said in a statement.

The ministry also said the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture visited the prison in October 2023 and “did not raise any concerns about prison conditions, sanitary conditions or issues related to activities outside the cell/contact with the outside world”.

The committee’s report is confidential, but the UN said at the time that it encouraged the Georgian government to make it public.

The case drew attention to Georgia’s strict approach to drug crimes and its widespread use of “plea bargaining” to resolve criminal cases.

Guram Imnadze, a criminal justice lawyer and drug policy expert based in Tbilisi, says that in 2024, almost 90 percent of drug-related crimes in Georgia were solved this way.

“The sentences are so severe that the agreement is in the interest of both parties,” explains Mr. Imnadze. “The primary strategy from a defense perspective is to plead as quickly as possible.”

Earlier agreements usually result in more lenient terms, with lower sentences and fines, he says.

For trafficking in large quantities of drugs, Georgian law provides sentences of up to 20 years or life in prison. Mr Imnadze says Miss Cully’s case coincided with the inauguration of a new home minister who has made drug crime a priority.

“What they want right now is to show the public what tangible results they have, and 12kg of marijuana is already a huge amount for public perception,” he says.

Miss Culley claims she was tortured and forced to carry the drugs but was warned she faced 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. The sum was not needed to go free, but it was enough to significantly reduce her sentence to two years. She is due back in court on Monday to hear her final sentence.

Mrs Kennedy says the family is doing everything they can to get her home “where she needs to be”.

Miss Culley’s lawyer, Malhaz Salakaya, said earlier that once a deal was reached, he would appeal to Georgia’s president to pardon the British teenager.

Mr Salakaya confirmed that Miss Cully had pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into the country by flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, but said she was forced to do so by gangsters who tortured her with a red-hot iron.

Georgia police have opened a separate criminal investigation into her allegations of coercion, he said.

When the teenager landed in Tbilisi on May 10, her luggage was immediately tagged by Georgian authorities, and although she tried to explain to police that someone should meet her at the arrivals hall, they did not follow through and charged her, he said.

Mr Salakaya says Georgian law has a provision for pregnant women, raising the family’s hopes that the teenager could be released before the birth.

“It is written in the law that when a child is born, the mother must be outside until the child is one year old,” he says.

Mrs Kennedy, who has traveled back and forth between the UK and Georgia, says her daughter gets on well with staff and inmates and has been able to get baby clothes for her.

Her daughter’s full story “will come in time,” she says.

“Until then, we are just a family doing our best for my daughter and my grandson.