The lawyer representing Brit teen Bella May Culley said she has asked for warmer clothes and that she is ‘getting along well’ with her two other cellmates in the all-female prison in Georgia
Suspected Brit drug smuggler Bella May Culley has complained about her medical care behind bars in Georgia and wants to go home, a lawyer says.
The 18-year-old, who told a court she is pregnant, vanished in Thailand before turning up in Georgia where she faces life in jail after allegedly importing cannabis. Now a celebrity lawyer who once represented speedboat killer Jack Shepherd says she has visited Bella in prison. Mariam Kublashvili described the British teenager as “very open” and “charming”. Bella apparently dislikes what she is being fed in prison and requested fruit and warmer clothing. And the teenager, from Billingham on Teesside, “would very much like to go home”, according to the lawyer.
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Kublashvili – who has appeared on Georgia’s version of Strictly – told how she offered her services to Bella pro bono at their half an hour meeting on Monday.
The Brit is being held at Women’s Prison No.5 in Rustavi, south of the ex-Soviet state’s capital Tbilisi. Bella – arrested at Tbilisi International Airport on 11 May – is accused of carrying about 12kg of cannabis and around 2kg of hashish into Georgia.
If found guilty, she faces a lengthy prison spell — which could be life in the worst-case scenario. Kublashvili said: “She is pregnant and needs medical care which she complained she wasn’t getting – there were no tests / checks or medical examinations done, she told me.
“She said she asked for a doctor, but the doctor wasn’t speaking English and they couldn’t understand each other.” The lawyer, who the Mirror reported last week planned to offer her services to Bella, represented killer Shepherd.
Kublashvili, 39, also said of Bella: “Initial impression was very positive – she is very open, very pleasant, charming. She doesn’t fit a profile of [a] drug trafficker at all. For anyone with any experience in dealing with such legal cases, it would be quite obvious that she is a victim here, [that] she’s been used and manipulated.
“I have a 20-year-old child myself and can only imagine what her parents must be feeling.” Bella’s dad, Niel, has travelled to Georgia. Kublashvili added: “She expect[s] her dad to visit either tomorrow [Tuesday] or after tomorrow.
“[She] Asked me if a jumper and warmer clothes (size M) could be sent to her. Which obviously I am happy to do. She wants fruits as well – doesn’t like what she is fed in the prison at all. I will be sending fruit over too. Said she would very much like to go home.”
Bella is also “getting along well” with two cellmates, the lawyer explained. She added: “[Bella] Asked me to get in touch with her dad – she said she knew he was getting lawyers and that carried a significant financial costs. I offered my services pro bono.”
Last year, Shepherd was freed after serving half his sentence over the death of Charlotte Brown, 24, who drowned on a 2015 date after his boat flipped on the Thames. He was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence at the Old Bailey in 2018 in his absence.
Shepherd, who had been a fugitive in Georgia, eventually handed himself in and was taken back to the UK in 2019.