Bella May Culley, 18, from Billingham, County Durham, is facing up to 20 years in jail in Georgia after she was allegedly caught with 30lbs of cannabis in her luggage
A British teenager accused of attempting to smuggle 30lbs of cannabis through an airport may face a lifetime behind bars in a notorious Eastern European prison, where inmates have reported horrifying and “degrading” conditions.
Georgian authorities have confirmed that Bella May Culley, an 18-year-old from Billingham, County Durham, was arrested at Tbilisi Airport after allegedly attempting to smuggle 30 pounds of cannabis into the country. At the time of her arrest, Culley was reportedly the subject of an international search, with her parents having reported her missing during a holiday in Thailand – some 4,000 miles away.
Footage aired by Georgian broadcasters appears to show Culley in handcuffs being escorted into the Central Criminal Police Department in Tbilisi. She now faces a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years – or even life – if convicted under Georgian drug trafficking laws.
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According to a statement from Georgia’s Interior Ministry, the charges against her carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Culley has been remanded in custody while awaiting trial, after a judge denied her bail, citing her as a potential flight risk.
If found guilty, she is expected to serve her sentence at Tbilisi Prison No. 5, Georgia’s only women’s correctional facility. The prison has drawn criticism in the past, with former inmates describing conditions there as “degrading”.
A 2006 report from Human Rights Watch found that both pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners at Tbilisi Prison No. 5 “receive inadequate food or nutrition and often get substandard or no medical care.”
“In these conditions they are at real risk of acquiring tuberculosis or other diseases,” it said. “Most detainees also lack access to daily exercise and, in many cases, cannot leave their overcrowded cells at all for weeks or months at a time.
“In one facility visited by Human Rights Watch, detainees had not been allowed to exercise for over five months. Most detainees do not have regular access to showers and no access to work, education, or any other meaningful activity.”
They added: “Conditions of detention and the treatment experienced by detainees violate Georgia’s own Law on Imprisonment, as well as international standards. There is a widespread and consistent gap between what is provided for in law and what is implemented in practice.”
Georgia has a history of harsh and often brutal treatment of prisoners, with reports of severe conditions in its correctional facilities. The country has faced widespread criticism for its prison system, which has been marked by overcrowding, poor living conditions, and instances of physical abuse.
One anonymous testifier said of her time in a Georgian prison to a human rights committee in the country’s parliament: “[They] were beating me. They were insulting me… During torture they drowned [me] in [a] bucket full of water and threatened [me] with rape.”
Another said: “They tore off my fingernails, damaged [my] skull, broke my leg bones, ribs, nose and teeth.
“I am 43 years old, but look like an old man. I often fall down while I am walking.”
The problem was so widespread in the early 2000s that Manfred Nowak, the UN’s then-Special Rapporteur, said in 2005: “There is always the threat of violence in prison in a closed space… torture and prisoner abuse by prison staff was considered to be normal and even encouraged.”
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT) used more pointed language, calling conditions “degrading” and “inhuman”, and going as far as to say they were “an affront to a civilised society” in its own report submitted the same year.
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