Outstanding American playwright and actor, Jeremy O. Harris, recognized for his Tony-nominated “Slave Play,” was once arrested in Japan on suspicion of smuggling the psychedelic drug ecstasy, officers stated Saturday.
Officials at Naha Airport on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa arrested Harris on Nov. 16 for an alleged violation of customs regulation for having 0.78 grams, or 0.0275 oz., of the crystalized drug, sometimes called MDMA, in a container in a tote bag he was once wearing, in line with Okinawa Regional Customs spokesperson Tatsunori Fukuda.
Harris, 36, had left London’s Heathrow Airport two days previous and transited in Taiwan’s Taoyuan Global Airport sooner than arriving in Naha for sightseeing, Fukuda stated. Okinawa is a well-liked hotel vacation spot with gentle climate all over the yr.
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP 
Fukuda stated Harris was once arrested at the spot and brought into custody by way of the Tomishiro police, which filed a prison criticism to the Naha District Prosecutors’ Place of business on Thursday for additional investigation and conceivable indictment. CBS Information has reached out to the Tomishiro police for added remark.
Jap government didn’t to find another medicine in his baggage and imagine the MDMA was once for his non-public use. They’re nonetheless investigating, Fukuda stated, whilst including that whether or not Harris made any remark at the case may just no longer be launched.
There was once no speedy remark from Harris’ representatives. Harris has no longer publicly commented on his arrest.
CBS Information reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Japan for added remark.
Jap prison procedures permit investigators to stay a suspect in custody for as much as 23 days sooner than indictment, and pretrial detention may also be extended if the accused workout routines their proper of silence or denies the fees, a convention extensively criticized as “hostage justice.”
The ones convicted of drug smuggling in Japan can face a multiyear jail time period.
Harris burst onto the humanities scene with “Slave Play,” written whilst he was once nonetheless a graduate scholar on the Yale College of Drama. It premiered off-Broadway in 2018, inciting controversy or even a petition to close down the manufacturing with its provocative mixture of race, elegance and sexual taboos. It moved to Broadway the next yr, incomes a Tony nomination for very best play, however didn’t win an award.
The play returned for a brief run on Broadway in December 2021.
“There have not been sufficient probabilities for us to replicate who we’re to the arena and to ourselves and to contemplate what that mirrored image approach, and so that is what ‘Slave Play’ will get to do for other people,” Harris advised CBS New York in 2021.
Along with small performing roles, he is cameoed as himself on a rebooted “Gossip Woman” and served as a co-producer on a number of episodes of HBO’s hit sequence “Euphoria.”
