Inside Georgia’s hellhole prisons where inmates face ‘inhuman’ conditions in ‘overcrowded’ crumbling cells and ‘filthy’ bathrooms – as Brit teen is remanded in custody amid drug smuggling charges

A British student who was arrested in Georgia for allegedly smuggling 14 kilos (30lbs) of cannabis into the former Soviet state could face up to two decades behind bars in a notorious female-only prison. 

If convicted, Bella May Culley, an 18-year-old from County Durham, may find herself locked away in Georgia’s ‘Prison No.5’ – a facility described by international watchdogs as overcrowded, crumbling and ‘an affront to a civilised society’.

And it’s just one of the country’s lock ups with a horror reputation.  

According to a UN report published earlier this year, the walls of many Georgia prisons are covered in swastikas – large snarling wolves that indicate aggression to authorities and eight-pointed stars.  

The presence of these symbols, according to the report, showed that prisoners exist in a hierarchy that existed to silence dissent. The omerta proved so effective that many prisoners stayed silent when asked questions by UN investigators. 

In many prisons, jail authorities that tracked prison fights noted them as ‘everyday incidents’, indicating the frequency that violence breaks out in detention centres. 

The prisons themselves are often mouldy and infested with pests including cockroaches. 

In one lock up, the solitary confinement cells were poorly ventilated and contained toilets that showed ‘signs of faeces on the rim and seemed to leak water onto the floor.’

Georgia has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the whole of Europe. In 2023, 256 Georgians per 100,000 were behind bars, a massive increase from 2022 when 235 per 100,000 were in prison.

And now, a British teenager faces becoming part of that statistic.  

Culley, who had vanished for days after travelling in Southeast Asia, was found nearly 4,000 miles away from her last known location when she was arrested at Tbilisi airport earlier this week.

Customs officers allegedly discovered 14 kilos (30lbs) of marijuana and hashish in her luggage.

The 18-year-old was reportedly charged with illegally purchasing and storing a particularly large amount of narcotics, illegally purchasing and storing the narcotic drug marijuana, and illegally importing it into Georgia.

During an inspection, ’34 hermetically sealed packages containing marijuana were found in the passenger’s bag, as well as 20 packages of hashish,’ according to local media reports.

Experts have said they’ve seen people get thrown behind bars for far less than that. 

Mystery still remains around why the 18-year-old from Billingham ended up in a country with a long and bloodstained history. 

Georgia also has a drawn-out past when it comes to treating prisoners in a brutal manner.

Under the Soviets, thousands of civilians were executed by Red Army soldiers in response to the August Uprising of 1924, with entire families being sent to their deaths at prisons across the nation without trial. 

But it wasn’t just the tyrannical Soviets responsible for countless deaths in Georgian prisons. 

After the yokes of communism fell from Georgia’s back in the early 1990s, the country faced severe political turmoil, and successive leaders took brutal lessons from the Soviets to heart. 

In the early 2000s, after then-president Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the bloodless ‘Rose Revolution’ and won plaudits early in his presidency for anticorruption reforms, the country adopted a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy towards crime. 

Though this worked, and crime drastically dropped, it came at a heavy cost. 

Minor crimes were met with long prison sentences that, according to an Open Society Foundation report from the time, lead to a ‘dehumanizing discourse around crime and criminals.’

This laid the foundations for widescale abuse of prisoners, as well as the political impetus to send as many people behind bars as possible. Coupled with crumbling Soviet infrastructure, the treatment of prisoners was utterly inhumane. 

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 jail Culley will be staying in – the only one in the country dedicated to women – was blasted by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in 2006 for ‘ill-treatment’, with a European inspection that same year branding the conditions ‘degrading’ and ‘inhuman’.

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT) found the prison to be in a ‘state of disrepair’, with walls and floors crumbling, inmates sleeping on ‘two-tier metal bunk beds,’ and bathrooms that were ‘decaying and filthy.’ 

Cells reportedly reeked of ‘human sweat, human excrement, and cigarette smoke,’ with garbage littering the ground outside cell doors.

Subsequent investigations in 2015 and 2023 by Georgia’s Department of Gender Equality of the Public Defender’s Office, supported by the UN, found that conditions had improved since the damning 2006 report. 

But inspectors pointed out a host of issues that were yet to be addressed. 

Prisoners at No. 5 penitentiary, located near the town of Rustavi, were forced to undergo humiliating strip searches and were often ordered to perform squats while naked.

This occurred even though inmates had the option to request a body scan rather than a strip search, monitors said, adding that inmates were forced to perform the exercises while naked, even during menstruation.

Inmates were routinely transported in vehicles that were ‘cold, smelling, unpleasant and with water leaking from the roof’, while their shower blocks – available for just two 20-minute periods per week – were rusting, unsanitary, and poorly drained.

The reports said inmates stood barefoot in pools of ‘dirty water,’ surrounded by ‘wet and damp’ walls, without proper ventilation or privacy, and inmates lacking funds were forced to use ‘unhygienic materials’ like torn fabric or ‘big nappies’ in place of sanitary products.

Inspectors also noted that inmates were not afforded adequate medical care and faced long waits for basic consultations.

In 2023, monitors noted better cleanliness, sufficient lighting, central heating, and adherence to minimum space standards – though water shortages and poor ventilation at the prison remained unresolved.

They also reported that prisoners in No. 5 penitentiary ‘are not properly informed about their rights’ and patients still wait ‘more than a month’ for specialist medical consultations.

It is here that the British teenager, described by her grandfather as ‘intelligent’ and ‘not daft’, may be held after being remanded in custody earlier this week on serious drug smuggling charges.   

She appeared at a preliminary court hearing this week in the Georgian capital but, on the advice of her lawyers, refused to answer questions, speaking only to declare she was pregnant.

Her lawyer said she is currently ‘terrified and confused’ and awaiting a medical examination to verify her claim.

Bella May’s Georgian lawyer sought her release on bail.

‘My client is currently exercising the right to remain silent, so we will provide detailed information later, once they decide how to proceed,’ they said.

‘A formal request must be submitted to the relevant authority, and then more detailed information regarding my client can be provided. At this stage, [she is] invoking [her] right to silence, and further developments will be shared later once a decision is made.’

But the judge subsequently remanded her in custody.

A former Georgian police officer warned the Mail of the lengthy jail sentences she could now face.

Former police general Jemal Janashia, one of the country’s foremost drug crime experts, said: ‘The fact that she was detained by CrimPol’s Special Tasks Department suggests this wasn’t a random search, but a planned operation. And the quantity of drugs found on her makes it hard to remain optimistic.

‘It’s a grim situation – people have been sentenced to eight years or more for possessing twenty times less in the past decade.’

Janashia continued: ‘Drug offences are one of the key priorities for the Georgian police. Theoretically, given the amount discovered, she could face life imprisonment. In practice, however, that sentence is usually reserved for murderers and high-level organised crime figures.

‘Still, a sentence of 15 to 20 years is a very real possibility.’

Before her arrest, the teenager had been posting glamorous content from a bout of travelling in Southeast Asia.

She shared images and videos on Instagram and TikTok, showing herself scuba diving and partying on the tropical islands of Palawan and Panay in the Philippines.

She also flaunted huge stacks of cash, with piles of £10 and £20 notes tied together by a hairband, and appeared to be smoking marijuana in some videos while referencing the notorious American outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.

In one April 1 video, she wrote: ‘Blonde or brunette? Erm how about we get up to criminal activities side by side like Bonnie n Clyde making heavy figures and f***ing on balconies over the world.’ She added in the caption: ‘I don’t care if we on the runnnnn baby long as I’m next to uuu.’

Her final social media posts came on May 9. She was reported missing after family members did not hear from her from May 10.

Her disappearance initially sparked concern back home in Billingham. Before police confirmed her arrest in Georgia, her mother Lyanne told Teesside Live: ‘She flew out to the Philippines after Easter with a friend and she was there for three weeks. 

‘She was posting loads of pictures and then she went to Thailand on about May 3. The last message she sent was to me and that was on Saturday at 5.30pm saying she was going to Facetime me later. 

‘That was the last message anyone has received from what we can figure out up to now.’

Lyanne added: ‘When she stopped answering messages, I assumed it was because she was flying back to surprise me. But then nothing.’

Her family’s shock only deepened when they learned she had not vanished in Thailand but had instead been arrested thousands of miles away in Georgia.

Speaking to the Mail yesterday, Bella May’s grandfather William Culley, 80, sobbed as he described the family’s horror and confusion. ‘I’m terrified that she’s in for a long sentence. I might never see her again – I’m 80 years old. 

‘She’s got sucked into something, somehow. She’s not an international drug trafficker. Can she even tell them who’s given her the drugs to take over? I bet she doesn’t.

‘These people keep out of the way. It’s all just very strange and at the moment we just don’t have any answers. We don’t know what to think. She was just going on holiday and then we never heard from her.’

Mr Culley, speaking from his home in Billingham, said his son and Bella May’s father, Niel, had flown from his home in Vietnam to Georgia to meet her in prison. 

Bella May’s Georgian lawyer also confirmed that Niel Culley was en route. Niel’s sister Kerrie, meanwhile, was due to fly to Thailand to help search for Bella May – but discovered while at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport that her niece had been detained in Georgia.

Mr Culley continued: ‘We feared the worst because nobody knew where she was. Kerrie called me last night and said she had been found. I said: ‘How can you have found her? You’re in Schiphol.’ And she said: ‘We found her, she’s in jail… drugs.’

‘I couldn’t believe it. Who the hell has she been with? She was on holiday with some friends, doing what 18-year-olds do – drinking and dancing. They must have met somebody who’s taken advantage of her.’

He described his granddaughter as a ‘normal’ 18-year-old who lived with her brother and mother in social housing in Billingham. ‘She’s not daft, she’s an intelligent girl. Why has she done it? Has someone dangled money in front of her? 

‘We just don’t know what has gone on until we get out there and talk to her. We are just hoping that somebody can do something. She must be terrified.’