BUCHAREST, Dec 19 \u2013 A Romanian court has sentenced Wiz Khalifa to nine months in prison for smoking cannabis on stage.<\/p>\n
The American rapper, real name Thomaz Cameron Jibril, admitted to smoking a joint during his performance at the Beach, Please! festival last year in Costinesti.<\/p>\n
A Romanian appeals court overturned an earlier fine of 3,600 Romanian lei (\u00a3619; $829) for drug possession and ruled the rapper must serve the sentence in custody.<\/p>\n
However he was sentenced in abstentia, and it is unclear if Jibril is even in Romania \u2013 he was last seen on Tuesday, performing with Gunna in California.<\/p>\n
The BBC has approached the ten-time Grammy-nominated artist for comment.<\/p>\n
Police briefly held and questioned Jibril after the concert on 13 July 2024, and prosecutors later charged him with possession of \u201crisk drugs\u201d for personal use.<\/p>\n
Romanian investigators said he was in possession of more than 18 grams of cannabis and consumed an additional amount on stage.<\/p>\n
In a written decision, the Constan\u021ba Court of Appeal judges said they overturned the original fine because the artist had sent \u201ca message of normalisation of illegal conduct\u201d and thereby encouraged \u201cdrug use among young people\u201d.<\/p>\n
Calling it an \u201costentatious act\u201d, the judges said the rapper was \u201ca music performer, on the stage of a music festival well known among young people\u201d who \u201cpossessed and consumed, in front of a large audience predominantly made up of very young people, an artisanal cigarette\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jabril said in a post on X a day after the incident that he did not mean to offend the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey [the authorities] were very respectful and let me go. I\u2019ll be back soon. But without a big ass joint next time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romanian criminologist Vlad Zaha told BBC News that there was little-to-no chance of the US extraditing Jibril, and described the sentence as \u201cunusually harsh\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the defendant\u2019s wealth and connections, Romania\u2019s lack of real negotiating power on extradition, and the legal and political status of cannabis in the US, it is highly unlikely that Wiz Khalifa will be sent to serve a prison sentence in Constan\u021ba, even though a formal judicial request will be submitted to the United States,\u201d Mr Zaha said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BUCHAREST, Dec 19 \u2013 A Romanian court has sentenced Wiz Khalifa to nine months in prison for smoking cannabis on stage. The American rapper, real name Thomaz Cameron Jibril, admitted to smoking a joint during his performance at the Beach, Please! festival last year in Costinesti. A Romanian appeals court overturned an earlier fine of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}