Canadian sought for drug trafficking and arms smuggling arrested in Medellín
Arif Jhuman, a Canadian citizen pursued by the United States and Canada, was detained at a sports centre in Medellín after remaining a fugitive for more than three years.
Canadian sought for drug trafficking and arms smuggling arrested in Medellín
Colombian security forces have detained a Canadian citizen who was among the most wanted fugitives by federal agencies in the United States. The arrest occurred at a gymnasium in the city of Medellín, where the man was exercising.
The detainee goes by the name Arif Jhuman, though he also operated under the false identity of Gillani. According to reporting by CBC, images of the arrest were released by Colombia's Defence Minister, Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez, who showed the moment armed agents entered the sports facility to execute the arrest warrant.
The mayor of Medellín, Fico Gutiérrez, used his X account to confirm the identity of the arrested man and send a firm message: the city will not serve as a hideout for international criminals. Local police authorities clarified that the Canadian was listed on Interpol's red notice list.
Beyond the American investigation, Jhuman faces legal problems in his country of origin. Ontario Provincial Police had included him in a national arrest warrant since April 2023, after he violated the terms of his supervised release. At that time, he was serving a sentence of nearly ten years for offences related to illicit substances.
A spokesperson for the Public Ministry in Tampa, Florida, confirmed that the arrested man is part of a group of five individuals named in a court indictment declassified in December of the previous year. That file links them to a scheme to transport more than one hundred firearms from United States territory to Canada, an operation that was said to have run between 2023 and 2024.
The prosecutor handling the case, Greg Kehoe, had previously stated that the arsenal included semi-automatic Glock pistols, as well as AK-47 and AR-15 type assault rifles. Twenty-nine of these weapons were subsequently found in various crime scenes in Canada, some of them with fatalities. The United States agency responsible for gun control characterised Jhuman and his accomplices as members of a cross-border criminal network that promoted violence on Canadian territory for economic gain.
The head of Colombian National Police, General William Oswaldo Rincón Zambrano, expressed his conviction that the fugitive had crossed South American borders using forged documentation.
Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)