{"id":791207,"date":"2026-07-09T19:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T19:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/791207\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T19:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T19:51:13","slug":"canadian-fugitive-drug-trafficker-captured-while-working-out-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/791207\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian fugitive drug trafficker captured while working out in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Canadian drug trafficker who spent more than three years on the run \u2014 recently wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with a cross-border gun-smuggling plot involving a “sophisticated” criminal organization \u2014 has been captured while working out at a gym in Medell\u00edn, Colombia.<\/p>\n

Video<\/a> posted online by Colombia\u2019s defence minister Wednesday night shows heavily armed security forces raiding the facility and a man later escorted away in handcuffs.<\/p>\n

On social media, Medell\u00edn\u2019s mayor identified<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

“Medell\u00edn is not a refuge for criminals,” Mayor Fico Guti\u00e9rrez said in the post on X.<\/p>\n

Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo S\u00e1nchez said Jhuman had also been sought by Canadian authorities for violating his parole.<\/p>\n

\"AArif Jhuman is seen in an image released by police in Ontario in April 2023, as the Repeat Offender Parole Enforcement (R.O.P.E.) Squad said he was wanted on a Canadawide warrant. (Toronto Police Service)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

An OPP spokesperson did not immediately provide a comment on the case when reached by CBC News on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear when Jhuman fled Canada, but Maj.-Gen. William Oswaldo Rinc\u00f3n Zambrano, the head of Colombia’s national police, said<\/a> he appeared to have entered the country using counterfeit identification documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

U.S. Attorney Greg Kehoe previously told CBC News the guns \u2014 mainly Glock handguns, but also high-powered AK-47s and AR-15s \u2014 were mainly destined for Ontario. According to a statement released by Kehoe\u2019s office in December, 29 firearms were recovered from unspecified Canadian crime scenes, including homicides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-791207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791207","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=791207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}