Pregnant British teen ‘forced' to smuggle drugs into Georgia

Times

7 hours ago

A pregnant British teenager has told a court she was 'forced under torture' to smuggle drugs into Georgia by a gang she encountered while on holiday in Thailand.
Bella May Culley, 18, is in police custody in the former Soviet republic, accused of illegally buying, possessing and importing large quantities of narcotics, including marijuana. If found guilty, she could face life imprisonment.
Culley, from Stockton-on-Tees in Co Durham, had been travelling in Asia in April and May, where she was scuba diving and partying on the islands of Palawan and Panay in the Philippines.
She went missing in Pattaya in Thailand, before being arrested at Tbilisi airport, where the authorities seized 11kg of marijuana and just over 400g of hashish — a highly potent form of cannabis.
At a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday, Culley, a student nurse , told Tbilisi city court that she never intended to get involved in the drug trade.
'I didn't want to do this — I was forced under torture. I was simply planning to travel. I study at university. I'm a student. I want to become a nurse. I've been tested for drugs, and nothing was found in my system — that should also be taken into account,' she told the court.
Malkhaz Salakaia, for the defence, told Judge Lela Kalichenko that Culley had approached a police officer in Thailand, who turned out to be a member of the criminal gang that forced her to carry out the crime.
During the hour-long hearing, Culley, who is 18 weeks pregnant, showed the court a 'snake like' scar on her right arm. She claimed it was inflicted before she was given the bag of drugs, which she denies ever touching.
Salakaia told the court: 'The suitcase from Thailand to Tbilisi was moved by other individuals. She was simply handed a passport and asked to take that particular flight. They told her someone would meet her in Georgia.
'She doesn't even know where she is. Someone was supposed to meet her, but they couldn't because the customs officers found the cargo.
'From Thailand to Sharjah [in the United Arab Emirates], from Sharjah to Thailand, this baggage was carried by a different person. She was only given a passport and told you go there and there. She tried to inform the passport control but was paid no attention. She even has no idea geographically where she is. She thought Tbilisi was a country.'
Culley did not enter a plea before her trial on July 10. Her defence asked for bail, telling the judge that she had never been convicted of a crime and went to Thailand with money she had 'earned through hard work'.
The judge denied her request for bail, claiming there was a risk she might flee and commit another crime.
Culley, who recently finished a course at Middlesbrough College, had travelled to southeast Asia twice since the start of the year. On her second trip, she partied on the islands in the Philippines, where she explored coastal caves and played with turtles, before flying to Thailand.
In May, Culley's grandfather, William Culley, 80, said that she was travelling to the Philippines alone, with plans to meet a man who had moved to the country from the northeast of England.
'She went to the Philippines to see somebody, a lad there, who she used to go out with a couple of years ago, who was working out there,' he said from his detached home in Billingham in Stockton-on-Tees. 'He was working out there for his father's company or something. But now I wonder if what she told me was true.'
William Culley had previously described his granddaughter as an intelligent woman who wouldn't knowingly get herself involved in drug trafficking and speculated that someone may have offered her money to take the bag to Georgia.
In recent social media posts, Culley had shared a video flaunting wads of cash held together by a hairband.
In one of her TikToks she referred to the American outlaw couple Bonnie and Clyde. 'How about we get up to criminal activities side by side like Bonnie n Clyde making heavy figures,' she said in the clip posted on April 1.
The teenager is believed to be in Tbilisi's prison No 5, the only women's jail in the country. A Georgian government report in 2015 found the cells contained no drinking water and that prisoners were sometimes given 'big nappies' instead of sanitary products.