Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
On Thursday, rapper Wiz Khalifa was sentenced by a Romanian court to nine months in jail for drug possession, the Associated Press reports. The sentencing comes more than a year after he was stopped by Romanian police for allegedly smoking weed onstage at the Beach, Please! Festival in Costineșt. Prosecutors said Khalifa, real name Cameron Jibril Thomaz, was found in possession of an additional 18 grams of cannabis on his person. The Constanta Court of Appeal delivered the sentence after he was initially convicted of “possession of dangerous drugs, without right, for personal consumption,” per Romanian national news agency Agerpres.
In April a lower court issued Khalifa a fine of 3,600 lei (equivalent to $830) for “illegal possession of dangerous drugs,” but prosecutors appealed the decision to pursue a harsher punishment. Drug laws in Romania are some of the strictest in Europe, where cannabis has been criminalized and possession can result in a prison sentence up to two years.
Because Khalifa is no longer in Romania, authorities would need to file an extradition request to fulfill the sentence. Romanian criminologist Vlad Zaha, who described the sentence as “unusually harsh,” told BBC News that it is unlikely the U.S. will extradite the rapper due to his “wealth and connections” and Romania’s “lack of real negotiating power.”
The Cut has reached out to representatives for Khalifa and will update this post if we hear back.
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