A judge has denied bail for a Calgary man arrested on extradition warrants connected to accused Canadian drug kingpin Ryan Wedding.<\/p>\n
Allistair Chapman, 33, and nine others were arrested last year in an FBI investigation into a billion dollar international drug trafficking organization allegedly run by Wedding in Mexico, Colombia, Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n
Chapman is accused of cocaine trafficking and helping Wedding, a former Team Canada Olympic snowboarder turned fugitive, set up the killing of an FBI informant.<\/p>\n
U.S. prosecutors allege Chapman helped arrange the killing by providing the man\u2019s photo to a co-accused and paying for it to be posted online. The informant was later shot dead at a restaurant in Colombia.<\/p>\n
Court of King\u2019s Bench Justice Paul Jeffrey says U.S. prosecutors have a strong case against Chapman, and releasing him on bail would undermine public confidence in the justice system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile he did not pull the trigger, he knew the purpose of the work he was assigned was the murder,\u201d\u00a0 the judge said in a written decision Friday. \u201cThe killing of a prosecution witness circumvents the rule of law and impairs the criminal justice system\u2019s ability to protect society.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge said if Chapman is extradited and convicted, he faces life in a U.S. prison.<\/p>\n
Chapman\u2019s lawyer had asked he be released on a $500,000 surety guaranteed by his parents and he be allowed to live with them under a curfew pending an extradition hearing.<\/p>\n
The Crown described Chapman as a \u201cloyal soldier\u201d to the criminal organization and a flight risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cChapman has failed to satisfy me on balance that his detention is not necessary,\u201d said Jeffrey.<\/p>\n
Wedding was arrested last month in Mexico and transferred to California. He had been placed him on the FBI\u2019s Top 10 most-wanted list.<\/p>\n
Chapman is set to appear in Calgary court again Mar. 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has denied bail for a Calgary man arrested on extradition warrants connected to accused Canadian drug…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-488675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}