Expectant ‘drug mule’ Bella Culley resorts to toasting bread over a candle in a Georgian prison as she anticipates her sentencing, according to her mother.

The young Briton has been incarcerated for five months following the discovery of cannabis worth £200,000 in her luggage upon her arrival in Tbilisi last May.

This week, 19-year-old Culley struck a plea deal that will result in a two-year prison term, contingent upon her family settling a hefty £140,000 fine on Monday.

In an interview with the BBC, her mother, Lyanne Kennedy, aged 44, disclosed that her daughter, who is 35 weeks pregnant, has been relocated to a facility for mothers and babies. Previously, Culley was confined in Georgia’s Rustavi Prison Number Five, enduring harsh conditions with just a hole in the ground for a toilet and limited access to showers, only twice a week.

Currently, the teenager from Teesside has the opportunity to prepare her own meals, making pasta in a kettle and toasting bread with a candle, as reported by her mother.

Describing the improved conditions for her daughter, Lyanne said: ‘She now gets two hours out for walking, she can use the communal kitchen, has a shower in her room and a proper toilet’. 

She added that Culley and her cell mates all cook for each other, saying that ‘Bella has been making eggy bread and cheese toasties, and salt and pepper chicken.’

Culley is due to give birth before Christmas after falling pregnant while travelling South East Asia with a man she said was not involved in drug smuggling.

Pregnant ‘drugs mule’ Bella Culley has to toast her bread over a candle, her mother has claimed

Culley’s mother seen arriving in court on October 28.

The teenager did not not even know Georgia was a country when she was arrested, touching down in the capital, Tbilisi, in May. Prior to her arrest, she had been reported missing in Thailand.

She has insisted that a British gang threatened to kill her family if she didn’t do as they told before being found with cannabis in her luggage.

Prosecutor Vakhtang Tsalugelashvili told Tbilisi City Court on Tuesday: ‘The plea bargain has been reached, our conditions have been met – two years of imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 Georgian Lari.’

Mr Malkhaz Salakaia, defending, said: ‘I can confirm. All relevant parties have been informed as well. We would like to ask the judge to schedule one final hearing to pass the final verdict.

‘She pleaded guilty, fully cooperated with the investigation, and the plea bargain has just been reached. So we would like to ask the judge to release her on bail, given her advanced pregnancy.’

But Judge Gelashvili said: ‘There are no legal grounds for changing her conditions, I am afraid,’ after a doctor ruled her conditions are ‘satisfactory’.

On pleading guilty, Culley asked her lawyer: ‘Will I be able to take the baby with me if I go back to jail?’

Culley, 19, reached a plea bargain this week which will see her handed a two-year sentence on Monday after her family pay an eye-watering £140,000 fine

Mr Salakaia responded: ‘Nobody is going to take the baby away from you.’

Culley’s time already served since May will be taken into account, meaning she has just over 18 months left behind bars.

It is understood that she may be permitted to move to house arrest in the last month of her pregnancy for 10 months in total.

Culley claims she was forced to peddle the drugs from Thailand to Georgia, claiming she was burned with a hot iron and shown a beheading video by a Thai gang.

She then claims she flew to Tbilisi – thinking that was the name of a country – not knowing she had 14kg of illegal cargo hidden in her bags.

It follows a huge surge in backpackers being targeted and groomed by British gangs who have flocked to Thailand.

The country recently legalised cannabis, meaning there is a massive illicit trade in smuggling it to Britain for huge mark ups.

After the National Crime Agency shut down a scheme to post it to Britain, they have reverted to grooming drug mules.

Sentencing is scheduled for 2pm local time next Monday.