Canadian fugitive drug trafficker captured while working out in Colombia

A Canadian drug trafficker who spent more than three years on the run — recently wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with a cross-border gun-smuggling plot involving a “sophisticated” criminal organization — has been captured while working out at a gym in Medellín, Colombia.

Video posted online by Colombia’s defence minister Wednesday night shows heavily armed security forces raiding the facility and a man later escorted away in handcuffs.

On social media, Medellín’s mayor identified the man as Arif Jhuman, a Canadian citizen who went by the alias Gillani and is wanted by U.S. federal authorities in connection with a firearm trafficking conspiracy.

Colombian police later told reporters Jhuman had been the subject of an Interpol red notice and was captured at a gym within a shopping mall. 

“Medellín is not a refuge for criminals,” Mayor Fico Gutiérrez said in the post on X.

Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez said Jhuman had also been sought by Canadian authorities for violating his parole.

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) announced in April 2023 that Jhuman, then 36, was wanted on a Canadawide warrant for breach of parole while serving a sentence of nine years and 11 months for drug trafficking charges. The OPP said at the time he was known to frequent Toronto.

An OPP spokesperson did not immediately provide a comment on the case when reached by CBC News on Thursday morning.

It’s not clear when Jhuman fled Canada, but Maj.-Gen. William Oswaldo Rincón Zambrano, the head of Colombia’s national police, said he appeared to have entered the country using counterfeit identification documents. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tampa, Fla., confirmed to CBC News the man arrested in Colombia is one of five suspects charged in an indictment unsealed last December in connection with a cross-border plot to smuggle more than 100 firearms from Florida to Canada between 2023 and 2024.

U.S. Attorney Greg Kehoe previously told CBC News the guns — mainly Glock handguns, but also high-powered AK-47s and AR-15s — were mainly destined for Ontario. According to a statement released by Kehoe’s office in December, 29 firearms were recovered from unspecified Canadian crime scenes, including homicides. 

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives described Jhuman and his co-defendants at the time as being part of “a sophisticated transnational criminal organization that until recently, fuelled violent crime in Canada for sheer profit.”