Drug rap Bella freed from jail

PREGNANT British drug mule Bella Culley was released from prison in Georgia yesterday.

- BY PATRICK HILL

The 19-year-old was expected to be sentenced to jail time at a court in Tbilisi yesterday.

But she was freed after her parents paid a £138,000 fine to cut her sentence and prosecutors altered a plea deal that would have led to her spending two years behind bars.

The teenager wept and hugged her mum Lyanne Kennedy, 44, and said thank you to the court after being released from the dock.

She said her release had come as a huge surprise. Asked if she had expected it, she said: "No, not at all."

Bella, who is reportedly due to give birth in December, pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs into the country earlier this year.

The student nurse from Billingham, Teesside, went missing in Pattaya, Thailand, in May before later turning up in Georgia.

She was arrested after 11kg of cannabis and more than 400g of hashish, a highly potent form of cannabis, were found in her luggage.

She left court yesterday holding hands with her mum and was heard speaking to her dad Niel, 49, on the phone in tears, triumphantly telling him: "I'm not in jail anymore."