Brit teen Bella Culley is hoping to give birth in the UK in the coming weeks surrounded by loved-ones – but has been told she may need special permission to make the trip
Locked-up Brit teen Bella Culley is now in a desperate race against time to get back to the UK and give birth to her baby boy, just hours after walking free from a Georgian jail.
The 19-year-old, from Billingham, Teesside, was finally released after six months behind bars in the ex-Soviet state, where she survived on pasta cooked in a kettle and bread toasted over a candle. But with her baby due within weeks, the heavily pregnant teen now faces a dash to make it home before she goes into labour. And she’s been told she may even need special permission to fly.
It comes as airlines typically ban women from flying after 36 weeks of pregnancy, and those beyond 28 weeks must produce a “fit-to-fly” letter from a doctor.
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Family sources say Bella’s loved ones are now working with consular officials to secure urgent paperwork to get her back to Britain “as soon as possible”. A tearful Bella was seen laughing and crying outside a Tbilisi courthouse yesterday, clutching her mum Lyanne Kennedy’s hand and speaking on the phone to her dad Niel. “I’m not in jail anymore!” she told him, to which he replied: “That’s brilliant!”
It marked the end of a shocking ordeal that began when Bella, then just 18, was arrested at Tbilisi Airport in May after border guards found £200,000 worth of cannabis hidden in her luggage, the Sun reports.
The Brit later told police she had been forced into acting as a mule by a violent Thai drug gang who threatened to kill her family, burned her with a hot iron and showed her brutal execution videos. Despite pleading guilty and cooperating with investigators, Bella was sentenced to 18 more months in jail last week after her family failed to raise the full £215,000 fine imposed by the court.
But a dramatic last-minute plea deal on Monday saw the judge reverse his decision, paving the way for her release. One witness said: “She was laughing and crying at the same time like she couldn’t believe it.”
Bella’s lawyer, Malkhaz Salakaia, argued that the teenager’s advanced pregnancy made further imprisonment “inhumane”, while even Georgia’s president was urged by the British Embassy to consider a pardon. Now free at last, Bella is said to be “exhausted but ecstatic” as she prepares to return home to her family in the UK, where she hopes to give birth surrounded by loved ones.
Her mum Lyanne, 44, said: “We’re just so happy she’s out. We’ll need to get her passport sorted, then we leave either today or tomorrow.”
Bella had been locked up in the notorious Women’s Penitentiary No.5 near Tbilisi, described by rights groups as overcrowded and unhygienic, with no running drinking water and toilets that were simply holes in the floor. Inmates were even forced to make their own sanitary pads out of rags.
In the final weeks before her release, Bella was transferred to a mother-and-baby unit where conditions were slightly better. Lyanne explained: “She was finally able to cook. She made eggy bread, cheese toasties, and salt-and-pepper chicken. It was the first time in months she felt human again.”
But now, as the freed teen prepares for motherhood, the clock is ticking. With her baby boy due any day, Bella’s next challenge is a race against time to make it home and start a new life far from the nightmare she’s endured.
