Pregnant ‘drugs mule’ Bella Culley will have her baby behind bars after agreeing to serve two years in prison – despite her family paying a staggering £140,000 fine.
The Teesside teenager’s parents were given three weeks to find £215,000 to secure her freedom at the start of this month.
Mother Lyanne Kennedy, 44, a charity worker, and father Niel Culley, 49, an oil rig technician who lives in Vietnam, have no UK property but managed to come agonisingly close to the total.
But after Niel handed over 500,000 Georgian Lari (£140,000) today in a plea bargain, she will be sentenced to two years by Judge Giorgi Gelashvili on Monday.
On pleading guilty, Culley, 19, asked her lawyer Giorgi Gelashvili: ‘Will I be able to take the baby with me if I go back to jail?’
Mr Gelashvili responded: ‘Nobody is going to take the baby away from you.’
Astonishingly, Lyanne said after the hearing that the Georgian government ‘did budge’ on the fine and the original amount ‘was a lot more’.
Culley is due to give birth before Christmas after falling pregnant while travelling South East Asia with a man she said was not involved in drug smuggling.
The teenager did not even know Georgia was a country when she was arrested, touching down in the capital, Tbilisi, in May.
She has insisted that a British gang threatened to kill her family if she didn’t do as they told her before being found with £200,000 worth of cannabis in her luggage.
This morning, she appeared in a grey sleeveless cardigan and a pink t-shirt and appeared slightly taken aback on being told she must serve two years.
Prosecutor Vakhtang Tsalugelashvili told Tbilisi City Court: ‘The plea bargain has been reached, our conditions have been met – two years of imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 Georgian Lari.’
Mr Salakaia, defending, said: ‘I can confirm. All relevant parties have been informed as well. We would like to ask the judge to schedule one final hearing to pass the final verdict.
‘She pleaded guilty, fully cooperated with the investigation, and the plea bargain has just been reached. So we would like to ask the judge to release her on bail, given her advanced pregnancy.’
But Judge Gelashvili said: ‘There are no legal grounds for changing her conditions, I am afraid,’ after a doctor ruled her conditions are ‘satisfactory’.
She waved to her mother as she was led off. Lawyers confirmed afterwards that had the family paid the full amount, the teenager could have been freed immediately.
Culley’s time already served since May will be taken into account, meaning she has just over 18 months left behind bars.
It is understood that she may be permitted to move to house arrest in the last month of her pregnancy for 10 months in total.
Culley claims she was forced to peddle the drugs from Thailand to Georgia, claiming she was burned with a hot iron and shown a beheading video by a Thai gang.
She then claims she flew to Tbilisi – thinking that was the name of a country – not knowing she had 14kg of illegal cargo hidden in her bags.
It follows a huge surge in backpackers being targeted and groomed by British gangs who have flocked to Thailand.
The country recently legalised cannabis, meaning there is a massive illicit trade in smuggling it to Britain for huge mark ups.
After the National Crime Agency shut down a scheme to post it to Britain, they have reverted to grooming drug mules.
Sentencing is scheduled for 2pm local time next Monday.
