Vinnie O’Dowd,<\/span>Luton Airport<\/span> and <\/span><\/p>\n Jason Arunn Murugesu,<\/span>North East and Cumbria<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Pregnant teenager Bella Culley, who admitted drug trafficking charges in Georgia, has arrived home after being freed from prison.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Now eight months pregnant, she had spent five months and 24 days in custody at Georgia’s Rustavi Prison Number Five.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The teenager, and those waiting to greet her, were met by police at arrivals and escorted through a staff door. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Her family had recently paid \u00a3137,000 to reduce her sentence to two years.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Miss Culley had previously pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into Georgia, flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n She said she was forced to do so by gangsters who tortured her with a hot iron.<\/p>\n She had initially gone missing while travelling in Thailand<\/a> and her lawyer said Georgian police had launched a separate criminal investigation into her coercion allegations.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"Reuters](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/7e09\/live\/db72d950-b8af-11f0-b0a9-658d692df91a.jpg.webp\")
Reuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n