Pregnant Bella Cooley 'bakes bread over candle flame' in Georgian jail

A British teenager – eight months pregnant and accused of drug trafficking – is awaiting sentence in a jail in Georgia, South Caucasus. A fee of £137,000 by his household will cut back his sentence, however what is going to the times be like for Bella Coolie, imprisoned 2,600 miles (4,180 km) from dwelling?

Speaking solely to the BBC, Bella Cooley's mom revealed that her daughter – who’s now 35 weeks pregnant – has been transferred to the jail's “mother and baby” unit.

It marks a big change for the 19-year-old after residing 5 months in a cell in Georgia's Rustavi Prison Number Five, the place there’s solely a gap within the floor for a bathroom, an hour of recent air a day and communal showers twice every week.

Lianne Kennedy says her daughter used to boil pasta in a kettle and toast bread over a candle flame, however now she is allowed to prepare dinner for herself and different girls and youngsters within the unit, and she or he is studying Georgian.

“Now she gets two hours a day for a walk, she can use the community kitchen, she has a shower and a proper toilet in her room,” she says, describing improved situations since her switch earlier this month.

“They all cook for each other,” Ms. Kennedy says. “Bella is making egg bread and cheese toasties, and salt and pepper chicken.”

Miss Kali has been held in pre-trial detention since May, when police found 12 kilograms (26 kilos) of marijuana and a pair of kilograms (4.4 kilos) of cannabis in her baggage at Tbilisi International Airport.

Some accounts from contained in the jail paint a transparent image of situations.

In September, Georgian media broadly revealed an open letter by which she stated she had been despatched to jail by Anastasia Zinovkina, a Russian political activist sentenced to eight and a half years for drug possession.

Ms Zinovkina, who insisted that the medication have been planted on her, described the sanitary situations as “appalling” and “horrible”.

“A bar of soap is used to wash hair, body, socks, underwear, and dishes,” he wrote. “If the soap runs out before the guard decides to give new soap (which happens once every three months) they don't wash.

“Toilet paper is provided once monthly, and only to those who have no money in their prison account. Only twice a week – on Wednesdays and Sundays – are they allowed to shower for 15 minutes.

“Girls who don't have slippers bathe barefoot or use shared slippers. They get fungal infections and pass them on to each other.”

The Georgian Justice Ministry told the BBC in May that prison conditions had significantly improved since previous monitoring reports by the Georgian Public Defender.

Under Georgia's new Penitentiary Code, which came into effect in January last year, prisoners “have the right to at least one hour of fresh air on a daily basis”.

It also highlighted various reforms including better health care through vocational education programmes, a digital university for distance learning and an online clinic.

“Georgian authorities put a human-centered approach at the heart of penitentiary reform to ensure the healthy management of the prison system,” it said in a statement.

The ministry also said the UN Sub-Committee on the Prevention of Torture visited the prison in October 2023 and “expressed no concerns about prison conditions, hygiene or issues related to out-of-cell activities/contact with the outside world”.

The committee's report is confidential but the United Nations said at the time that it had encouraged the Georgian government to make it public.

The case has drawn attention to Georgia's tough approach to drug-related crimes and its widespread use of “plea bargaining” to resolve criminal cases.

Guram Imnadze, a criminal justice lawyer and drug policy expert based in Tbilisi, says that about 90% of drug-related crimes in Georgia in 2024 were solved this way.

“The sentences are so severe that plea bargaining is in the best interests of both parties,” explains Mr Imnadze. “The main strategy from a defense perspective is to get a plea bargain as quickly as possible.”

He says earlier agreements generally contained lenient conditions with lower sentences and fines.

For drug trafficking in large quantities, Georgian law provides for a sentence of up to 20 years or life imprisonment. Mr Imnadze says Miss Kali's case coincides with the taking over of a new interior minister, who has made tackling drug crimes a priority.

“They simply wish to present the general public what concrete outcomes they’ve, and 12 kilograms of marijuana is already an enormous quantity for public notion,” he says.

Miss Cooley claimed she was tortured and forced to carry drugs, but was warned she faced 20 years in prison. But, he was told that he could be released for a “substantial sum”.

Last Tuesday, in Tbilisi City Court, the teenager heard that her family had managed to raise £137,000. He doesn't need this amount of money to go free, but just enough to reduce his sentence by two years. She is due back in court on Monday to hear her final sentence.

Ms Kennedy says the family is doing everything possible to get him home “the place he must be”.

Miss Kuli's lawyer, Malkhaz Salakia, had earlier said that, once a settlement was reached, he would appeal to Georgia's president to pardon the British teenager.

Mr Salakia confirmed that Miss Cooley had pleaded guilty to bringing drugs into the country after flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the UAE, but said she was forced to do so by gangsters who tortured her with a hot iron.

Georgian police had launched a separate criminal investigation into her allegations of coercion, he said.

When the teenager landed in Tbilisi on May 10, his luggage was immediately marked by Georgian authorities and, although he attempted to explain to police that someone was supposed to meet him in the arrivals hall, they did not comply and charged him, he said.

Mr Salakia says there is a provision in Georgian law for pregnant women, which has raised family hopes that the teenager could be released before giving birth.

He says, “It is written within the regulation that when a baby is born, the mom ought to keep away till the kid is one 12 months outdated.”

Ms Kennedy, who has been traveling back and forth between the UK and Georgia, says her daughter is getting on well with staff and prisoners and is able to afford children's clothes for herself.

Her daughter's full story “will are available in time,” she says.

“Until then we’re only a household doing every part we are able to for our daughter and grandson.”