In case you haven’t been following: 19-year-old British girl Bella May Culley went missing in Thailand a couple months back, only to pop up 4,000 miles away in Georgia where she was busted with 12kg of cannabis and 2kg of hashish in her suitcase at Tbilisi International Airport.
Bella, who is 18 weeks pregnant, claims she was tortured and threatened with a hot iron to force her into trafficking the drugs, and says that Thai customs and border officials were in on it. In fact she claims that she tried to approach a police officer at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, but he was in on it too!
Just one problem with that story: CCTV footage from the airport shows she calmly made her way through automated passport control with no signs of distress and no interaction with police:
Thai police chief Lieutenant General Choengron Rimpadee said that ‘there is absolutely no factual basis to her claims’ while presenting the CCTV footage, saying: ‘There is no evidence whatsoever that any immigration or police officers forced or threatened the suspect to smuggle drugs out of the country.’
Bella, who is looking at 20+ years in prison, pleaded not guilty to charges of possession and trafficking illegal drugs at Tbilisi City Court.
She told the judge: ‘I did not want to do this. I was forced to do this through torture. I just wanted to travel. I am a good person. I am a student at university. I am a clean person. I don’t do drugs.’
Bella apparently has a scar on her wrist which she showed the court as ‘proof’ that she had been tortured and coerced into taking the drugs. I’m not sure what she was thinking trying to implicate Thai police officers and border officials, especially as the CCTV footage immediately proves that she made that part up. Of course, there is a chance that whoever supplied her with the narcotics coerced her through torture and/or intimidation, but the fact she lied about her experience at the airport lends doubt to the rest of her story. Didn’t her dumb@ss lawyer remind her that they’ve got CCTV at airports?
Well anyway, it’s not looking good for Bella May Culley, her unborn child, and their chances at freedom. Then again, who knows? Maybe the Georgians will feel sorry for her, consider that she’s young and dumb and pregnant, and take it easy on her.
That’s rather unlikely though given she has been denied bail, with her next hearing scheduled for July 10. Let’s see what happens then.
For the two girls who were recently caught smuggling 35kg of cannabis from New York to Birmingham, click HERE.
