'I was in prison like one awaiting missing Brit - they tore off my fingernails'
Bella May Culley, 18, from Billingham, County Durham, is facing up to 20 years in jail in Georgia after she was allegedly caught with 30lbs of cannabis in her luggage
A British teenager accused of attempting to smuggle 30lbs of cannabis through an airport may face a lifetime behind bars in a notorious Eastern European prison, where inmates have reported horrifying and "degrading" conditions.
Georgian authorities have confirmed that Bella May Culley, an 18-year-old from Billingham, County Durham, was arrested at Tbilisi Airport after allegedly attempting to smuggle 30 pounds of cannabis into the country. At the time of her arrest, Culley was reportedly the subject of an international search, with her parents having reported her missing during a holiday in Thailand - some 4,000 miles away.
Footage aired by Georgian broadcasters appears to show Culley in handcuffs being escorted into the Central Criminal Police Department in Tbilisi. She now faces a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years - or even life - if convicted under Georgian drug trafficking laws.
According to a statement from Georgia's Interior Ministry, the charges against her carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Culley has been remanded in custody while awaiting trial, after a judge denied her bail, citing her as a potential flight risk.
If found guilty, she is expected to serve her sentence at Tbilisi Prison No. 5, Georgia's only women's correctional facility. The prison has drawn criticism in the past, with former inmates describing conditions there as 'degrading'.
A 2006 report from Human Rights Watch found that both pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners at Tbilisi Prison No. 5 "receive inadequate food or nutrition and often get substandard or no medical care."
"In these conditions they are at real risk of acquiring tuberculosis or other diseases," it said. "Most detainees also lack access to daily exercise and, in many cases, cannot leave their overcrowded cells at all for weeks or months at a time.
"In one facility visited by Human Rights Watch, detainees had not been allowed to exercise for over five months. Most detainees do not have regular access to showers and no access to work, education, or any other meaningful activity."
They added: "Conditions of detention and the treatment experienced by detainees violate Georgia's own Law on Imprisonment, as well as international standards. There is a widespread and consistent gap between what is provided for in law and what is implemented in practice."
Georgia has a history of harsh and often brutal treatment of prisoners, with reports of severe conditions in its correctional facilities. The country has faced widespread criticism for its prison system, which has been marked by overcrowding, poor living conditions, and instances of physical abuse.
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 European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT) used more pointed language, calling conditions "degrading" and "inhuman", and going as far as to say they were "an affront to a civilised society" in its own report submitted the same year.
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Wales Online
31 minutes ago
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Violence erupts for third night in UK town as rioters set leisure centre on fire
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The circus around Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia – whose full name the New York Times likes to trot out as if citing an old-school English aristocrat – speaks volumes about the immigration battle roiling the US. Our friend Kilmar is what we fuddy-duddies insist on calling an illegal immigrant. The Salvadoran crossed clandestinely into the US in 2012. As for what he's done since, that depends on whom you ask. According to his GoFundMe page, Kilmar is a 'husband, union worker and father of a disabled five-year-old'. Left-wing media portray 'the Maryland man' – a tag akin to Axel Rudakubana's 'a Welshman' – as an industrious metalworker devoted to his family. His wife has rowed back on the temporary protective order she once requested, claiming she'd been over-cautious. Yet according to the Trump administration, Kilmar is a member of the notoriously violent street gang MS-13 who's derived his primary source of income from smuggling hundreds of illegals over the southern border for several years. Choose A or B. In 2019, Kilmar was arrested for loitering along with three other men, one a suspected MS-13 member. He was carrying marijuana, for which (of course) he wasn't charged. From his clothing, tattoos and, more persuasively, a 'past proven and reliable' confidential source who verified he was an active gang member using the moniker 'Chele', police adjudged that Kilmar was a gangbanger, for which (of course) he wasn't charged. He was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement – whose acronym, ICE, reinforces its rep as cold-hearted – which moved to deport him. Kilmar (of course) contested his removal. 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Spectator
8 hours ago
- Spectator
My plan for Prevent
In the autumn of 1940, British cities were being bombed every night by large aeroplanes whose provenance was apparently of some considerable doubt. While the public almost unanimously believed the conflagrations to have been caused by the Luftwaffe, the authorities – right up to the government – refused to speculate. Indeed, when certain members of the public raised their voices and said 'This is all down to Hitler and Goering and the bloody Germans!', they received visits from the police who either prosecuted them for disturbing the peace or put their names on a list of possible extremists. The nights grew darker. The number of towns and cities subjected to these nightly bombardments widened. Very soon everybody in the country knew somebody whose home had been destroyed or who had themselves been killed. The government was forced to take action, and so in November 1940 it came up with what it called its 'Prevent' strategy, which aimed to protect British cities from further destruction. In the introduction to this new policy, civil servants listed possible vectors for these bombing raids and top of the list, by some margin, were the Slovaks. A senior intelligence officer told the public: 'The greatest threat to our nation today is from the Slovaks. We must train our people in how to spot Slovaks and report them to the police whenever they can.' The Germans were also mentioned, further down the list of possible perps, but the wording here was heavily caveated. Yes, some Germans may have been involved, but over all the German population was utterly devoted to peace and regretted the nightly infernos every bit as much as did the people who suffered under them. Our own air force was directed to drop its bombs on Bratislava, Kosice, Poprad and (the consequence of an understandable confusion over the names of the two countries) Maribor. And yet for some mystifying reason, the raids on Britain did not lessen. This seems to me exactly the response of our government(s) and most importantly of Prevent to the threat from Islamic terrorism. Let me be clear: I am not remotely comparing Muslims with Germans or Islam with National Socialism – I am simply saying that, in effect, this is what our government would have done in 1940 if it had been gripped by the same cringing witlessness and outright lying that possesses seemingly all of our authorities today when it comes to terrorist attacks upon the British people. You may be aware of the manifestly stupid quote from the Prevent halfwits that people who believe that 'western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups' are cultural nationalists at risk of becoming the kind of extremists who end up murdering people. People who believe the above probably consist of 70 per cent of the British population and, if his latest speeches are anything to go by, include the Prime Minister. And yet this stuff pervades everything Prevent puts out, while at the same time exonerating Islam and in some cases even those Muslims who do become terrorists (because they have suffered, you see). If people who support Brexit or worry about immigration are extremists, you're going to get pretty high figures So, for example, Bolton council's useful 'Prevent' handbook singles out 'right-wing extremists' as being at the forefront of terror attacks in the UK, and these extremists include people who are cultural nationalists: 'Cultural nationalism is ideology characterised by anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-Muslim, anti-establishment narratives, often emphasising British/English 'victimhood' and identity under attack from a perceived 'other'.' Islamic terrorism is also mentioned – but, again, heavily caveated. Then there's Prevent's own list of people who were picked up under its guidelines: 45 per cent were related to extreme right-wing radicalisation (230); 23 per cent were linked to Islamist radicalisation (118); the rest were related to other radicalisation concerns, including incels and those at risk of carrying out school shootings. But then I suppose if people who proclaim their support for Brexit or worry a bit about immigration are extremists, you are going to get pretty high arrest figures. If you add into the mix the fact that simply to associate Islam with terrorism you are guilty of Islamophobia, then you can see why we're in the state we're in. Incidentally, when she was Prime Minister, Theresa May, to her credit, drafted a new introduction to the Prevent guidelines which made it clear that the biggest threat to British security was al Qaeda, not Tommy Robinson et al. But that message does not seem to have sunk in with those in Prevent. It seems almost pointless to run through the facts. The truth is that almost every fatal terrorist attack in Britain since 2001 has been perpetrated by Islamists. All bar three. Have these people got a twisted or perverted understanding of Islam, as Prevent insists? I haven't a clue. I am no Quranic expert. I'm just, y'know, taking their word for it. Further, 80 per cent of the Counter Terrorism Policing network's investigations are related to Islamism (2023). Some 75 per cent of MI5's surveillance cases are Islamists. There are around 40,000 potential jihadis being monitored by our security services. There is not the remotest doubt as to the provenance of the gravest terror threats to our country. It's not the shaven-headed nutters with swastika armbands. It is Islamists. Nigel Farage's answer is to sack everyone working in Prevent. That seems a perfectly reasonable suggestion. But I may have a better one. Scrap Prevent entirely and initiate a new network of monitoring and reporting which focuses solely on Islamic terrorism. Junk the sixth-form philosophising over what is meant by the term 'extremist' and locate the problem precisely where it is: somewhere within our Muslim communities, even if we accept that our Muslim communities may not want them there. In short, get real and tell the truth. This kind of approach worked pretty well 85 years ago.
