I was belatedly baptised last week in the Church of England, and though Christians are enjoined to show compassion to sinners and forgive them their trespasses, my eyes do not fill with tears at the plight of 18-year-old Bella May Culley from Middlesbrough. Bella currently finds herself in Prison No. 5 in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi after she was accused of smuggling drugs into the country. The prison is described in British media reports as decaying and dangerous, but which, from the pictures, looks tough, austere and simply furnished – no worse than one might expect of correctional facilities in the Caucasian republic.
Even someone as daft as Bella must be vaguely aware that in certain Asian countries, smuggling drugs can carry the death penalty
Bella mysteriously vanished from a trip to the Philippines and Thailand. Her family back home on Teesside say they had no idea what had happened to her until she suddenly surfaced in a Tbilisi court this week, charged with trying to smuggle a suitcase filled with 14kg of cannabis into the country. Allegedly, the cannabis was unwrapped and must have reeked so strongly that even a Georgian border guard with blocked nostrils would have smelt it. Now Bella could be looking at a 30-year jail sentence in Stalin’s homeland, where the laws on drugs are considerably more draconian than our own relaxed approach to the possession and sale of cannabis.
Bella says that she is pregnant, but she is still likely to face years behind bars if found guilty. In an emotional interview with Metro, Bella’s grandfather, 80-year-old William Culley, said that he was ‘terrified’ that if she got a long sentence he would not live to ever see her again. Mr Culley added that he thought drug smugglers ‘may have taken advantage’ of Bella’s youth and naivety.
Judging by the selfies that Bella posted on Instagram and TikTok during her holiday, ‘naivety’ doesn’t quite cover it. She appears to be a typical member of the Love Island generation, believing that if she poses in scantily clad selfies pouting like a Kardashian she will be magically wafted into a lifestyle appropriate to that status. Alas, reality seems to have caught up with her. Even if approached and threatened by intimidating criminals, did it not occur to her to tell the cabin crew on the aircraft what had happened?
At the risk of sounding like a harumphing reactionary old fart, dare I suggest that anyone who is so staggeringly foolish as to go through an airport laden with a case full of unwrapped cannabis deserves what they get? Even someone as daft as Bella must be vaguely aware that in certain Asian countries, smuggling drugs can carry the death penalty – so she might count herself lucky if she escapes with a lengthy jail term.
Just as reprehensible is the attitude of some parts of our media to such cases as Bella’s. She is not the victim of a cruel miscarriage of justice in a faraway country of which we know nothing, nor a persecuted political prisoner. We are expected to feel sorry for her. The sorrow I feel is for a whole generation which believes the world is its playpen and behaves as though it were as dumb as bat droppings.
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