Halle-Vilvoorde Court demanded a 36-month prison sentence on Monday for an American man in his thirties, arrested at Brussels Airport for a suspected drug smuggling operation.
The man touched down at Brussels Airport on 23 August. When customs asked him to open his suitcase, he alleged unfamiliarity with the numerical lock combinations.
The suitcase, subsequently opened by customs officers, was found to contain several plastic packages of cannabis, totalling 2.36 kilograms.
"Recently, we’ve been seeing an uptick in cannabis trafficking from the United States," stated the public prosecutor. "It seems that since the drug’s legalisation in Canada and select US states, smuggling the substances from the US to Europe has become profitable."
The court demanded a 36-month prison sentence for the American. In response, his lawyer requested acquittal, stating: "My client wasn’t aware of the drugs in the suitcase. He met a man in Los Angeles, also an aspiring photographer, who suggested travelling through Europe together to expand their portfolios. Before their European departure, they briefly stayed in the same hotel, where the man must have seized a momentary absence of my client to hide the drugs in his suitcase, even altering the lock code."
The verdict will be announced on 11 December.
