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A picture of former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Marriage ceremony, who was a fugitive and had been charged with allegedly operating and taking part in a transnational drug trafficking operation, is displayed on a video monitor together with bricks of cocaine, foreground, throughout an October 2024 information convention on the FBI workplaces in Los Angeles.
Damian Dovarganes/AP
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Damian Dovarganes/AP
WASHINGTON — Ryan Marriage ceremony, a former Olympic snowboarder from Canada who was among the many FBI’s prime fugitives and faces fees associated to multinational drug trafficking and the killing of a federal witness, has been arrested in Mexico, prime Justice Division officers stated Friday.
Marriage ceremony, 44, is accused of operating a drug trafficking operation, and officers say he orchestrated a number of killings to additional the drug crimes. He was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wished Fugitives record, and authorities had provided a $15 million reward for data resulting in his arrest and conviction.
U.S. Lawyer Common Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Marriage ceremony’s arrest in social media posts. Patel stated Marriage ceremony was being transported to the U.S. after being apprehended Thursday night time in Mexico, the place U.S. authorities imagine the previous Olympian been hiding for greater than a decade.
“It is a enormous day for a safer North America, and the world,” Patel wrote on the social platform X, “and a message that those that break our legal guidelines and hurt our residents might be dropped at justice.”
Patel was anticipated to carry a information convention later Friday in California.
Patel held conferences in Mexico on Thursday and left Friday with two detainees, Mexico’s Safety Secretary Omar García Harfuch wrote on X. He stated the 2 detainees have been a Canadian citizen who turned himself in on the U.S. embassy, in addition to another person who was among the many FBI’s most-wanted and had been detained by Mexican authorities.
A member of Mexico’s Safety Cupboard, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk publicly, instructed The Related Press that Marriage ceremony was the Canadian citizen who turned himself in.
Marriage ceremony competed for his dwelling nation within the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis. Olympic information present he participated in a single males’s snowboarding occasion, parallel big slalom, ending twenty fourth.
Marriage ceremony was charged in 2024 with operating a drug ring that used semitrucks to maneuver cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Southern California and Canada. Authorities stated his aliases included “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy” and “James Conrad Kin.”
In November, U.S. Lawyer Common Pam Bondi introduced that he had additionally been indicted on fees of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia to assist him keep away from extradition to the U.S.
Authorities stated Marriage ceremony and co-conspirators used a Canadian web site known as “The Soiled Information” to put up {a photograph} of the witness so he might be recognized and killed. The witness was then adopted to a restaurant in Medellín in January and shot within the head.
Marriage ceremony faces separate drug trafficking fees in Canada that date again to 2015, in accordance with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Marriage ceremony was beforehand convicted within the U.S. of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to jail in 2010, federal information present. Federal prosecutors in 2024 stated they believed Marriage ceremony, after his launch from jail, had resumed drug trafficking beneath the safety of the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.
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