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A pregnant British teenager jailed for smuggling drugs into Georgia is set to be released. Bella Culley, 19, who is reportedly due to give birth in December, was expected to face jail time after confessing to smuggling drugs into the country earlier this year. But she will now be released, with the teenager having already spent nearly six months on remand in jail following her arrest at the international airport of Georgia's capital on May 10. Her family, including her mum Lyanne Kennedy, 44, a charity worker, and her dad Niel Culley, 49, an oil rig technician, paid a fine of 500,000 Georgian Lari (£138,000) as part of a plea agreement with Georgian prosecutors. Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE Her mum Lyanne wept outside the courtroom before telling the Mirror .: "I am so happy, so happy. I know I don't look like it, but so happy." Prosecutor Vakhtang Tsalugelashvili said: “It was our initiative - we took into consideration her age, her condition and her good behaviour, and that she fully cooperated". A source at the court added the Georgian authorities decided to give mercy to the teenager given how close she is to giving birth. Bella's solicitor had previously stated that the size of the fine paid would determine the length of her sentence - with the possibility of jail time being cancelled, depending on the amount of money handed over. It is understood that the court initially demanded 800,000 Georgian Lari (£220,000) for her release. During a previous hearing last week, Mr Salakaia had sought his client's release on bail before today's sentencing hearing. However, Judge Giorgi Gelashvili rejected the application, telling him there were no legal grounds upon which to change her conditions. Speaking at the previous hearing Mr Salakaia said: "She pleaded guilty, fully co-operated with the investigation and the plea bargain has just been reached. So we'd like to ask the judge to release her on bail, given her advanced pregnancy." During the same hearing, Bella was heard asking her lawyer: "Will I be able to take the baby with me if I go back to jail?". He told her: "Nobody is going to take the baby away from you". Bella, a 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 over 400g of hashish, a highly potent form of cannabis, were found in her luggage. Bella has claimed she was forced to traffic the drugs by gangsters who branded her with an iron, showed her a video of a man being decapitated and threatened to behead her family if she refused to co-operate. At a previous hearing in July, she claimed: "I didn't want to do this. I was forced by torture... All I wanted to do was to travel."
