PREGNANT drug mule Bella Culley has arrived home in the UK – as her mum said she was “overwhelmed” to be free.
The 19-year-old embraced family and friends briefly at the arrivals in Luton Airport, before officers escorted her away to a waiting van.
Footage from this evening shows Bella and her 44-year-old mum Lyanne Kennedy striding out of arrivals at Luton Airport, accompanied by two other people.
Lyanne appears to be wheeling the cream coloured suitcase which Bella used to smuggle a £200,000 cannabis stash back May.
Security staff follow the group as they walk straight through a door off to the side.
Bella was dressed in a grey sleeveless top and grey trousers with a black blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
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Bella, 19, jetted in from Georgian capital Tbilisi after a five-month ordeal in a hellhole jail following her arrest for smuggling cannabis from Thailand to the ex-Soviet state.
After Bella’s release, Lyanne told The Sun: “Bella is still very overwhelmed.
“She hasn’t slept and getting home to her brother, my son, is our priority today.”
The pair were seen arriving for an easyJet flight wheeling what appeared to be the same cream suitcase which Georgian airport cops found stuffed with 31lb of cannabis and hashish in May.
Her case matched one pictured after her arrest which was crammed with drugs in black vacuum-sealed packages.
She told a court she was forced to traffic the stash from Thailand by a brutal gang who branded her with an iron and forced her to watch beheading videos.
Bella was due to touch down at 7pm at London Luton Airport after arriving for their five-and-a-half-hour flight just 10 minutes before check-in was due to close.
The pair went straight to the Speedy Boarding gate and made it safely through security.
Bella’s baby bump was clearly visible as she arrived in a beige vest and matching flares.
The heavily-pregnant teenager had sparked concerns that she may be past the normal 36-week limit to fly.
But she took off after her lawyer confirmed that she did not need special permission to board the only direct flight to the UK.
Bella was said to be desperate to escape her jail ordeal and start a new life back home in Billingham, Teesside with her baby boy, due before Christmas.
She fell pregnant by a British man on her disastrous Far East backpacking trip before she fell into the clutches of a Thai drug gang.
The teenager expected to be sentenced to serve another 18 months in grim No 5 Women’s Penitentiary near capital Tbilisi on Monday morning after striking a plea bargain deal.
Her parents stumped up the £140,000 being demanded for her to walk free by Georgian authorities.
But prosecutors told her lawyer and stunned mum Lyanne that she would be allowed to walk free immediately on Monday on compassionate grounds.
Bella endured grim jail conditions at the women’s penitentiary, boiling up pasta in a kettle and roasting bread over a candle in a cell with a hole-in-the-floor toilet.
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But the relieved backpacker and her baby will now get NHS care – and celebrate Christmas together back home.
The teenager’s Georgian lawyer Malkhaz Salakaia said today: “I’m very happy it ended with her free. I wish them all the best.”
Inside the dark world of Brit ‘drug mules’
A SLEW of drug mule arrests involving Brits have emerged in the last 12 months.
In April and May, two Brit women were arrested abroad for alleged drug smuggling.
Bella was the first after she allegedly tried to smuggle a suitcase of cannabis into Georgia.
Meanwhile, former air stewardess Charlotte May Lee was also caught allegedly trying to smuggle drugs worth £1.2million into Sri Lanka.
Her two suitcases were said to have been stuffed with 46kg of a synthetic cannabis strain known as kush — which is 25 times more potent than opioid fentanyl.
If found guilty, South Londoner Charlotte could face a 25-year sentence.
A young mum was detained in Germany for allegedly smuggling cannabis in her bags on a flight from Thailand – in yet another shocking case.
Glamorous Cameron Bradford, 21, from Knebworth, Herts, was detained at Munich Airport on April 21 as she tried to collect her luggage.
It comes as a Brit couple claiming to be tourists from Thailand have been busted with more than 33kg of cannabis in their suitcases at a Spanish airport.
The pair were picked out by suspicious cops at Valencia Airport after displaying a “nervous and evasive attitude” and are now behind bars on drug trafficking charges.
Experts told The Sun how wannabe Brit Insta stars are being lured by cruel gangs into carting drugs across the world.
Then last month, a six-year-old British boy was arrested in Mauritius suspected of smuggling part of a £1.6million dope haul stuffed inside his wheelie case.
The lad was picked up by customs officials along with his mum and five other Brits as they arrived on the tropical island.
Authorities branded the use of a child in the audacious drug smuggling plot as “inhumane”.