Vinnie O’Dowd,Luton Airport and
Jason Arunn Murugesu,North East and Cumbria
Pregnant teenager Bella Culley, who admitted drug trafficking charges in Georgia, has arrived home after being freed from prison.
The 19-year-old from Billingham, Teesside, had initially faced a possible 20 years in jail, but prosecutors made a last-minute change to the terms of a plea bargain.
Now eight months pregnant, she had spent five months and 24 days in custody at Georgia’s Rustavi Prison Number Five.
She walked free from court in Tbilisi arm-in-arm with her mother on Monday and arrived on an Easyjet flight at Luton Airport just before 19:00 GMT.
The teenager, and those waiting to greet her, were met by police at arrivals and escorted through a staff door.
Miss Culley was detained on 10 May having been arrested at Tbilisi International Airport when 12kg (26lb) of marijuana and 2kg (4.4lb) of hashish were found in her luggage.
Her family had recently paid £137,000 to reduce her sentence to two years.
On Monday her lawyer Malkhaz Salakaia said that prosecutors made the changes to the plea deal and, given her age and pregnancy, decided to free her.
ReutersMiss Culley had previously pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into Georgia, flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
She said she was forced to do so by gangsters who tortured her with a hot iron.
She had initially gone missing while travelling in Thailand and her lawyer said Georgian police had launched a separate criminal investigation into her coercion allegations.
Miss Culley had been held in pre-trial detention since May, first in stark conditions in Georgia’s Rustavi Prison Number Five before being transferred to a “mother and baby” unit.
