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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 costs associated to multinational drug trafficking and the killing of a federal witness, has been arrested in Mexico, prime Justice Division officers mentioned 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 Needed Fugitives record, and authorities had provided a $15 million reward for info resulting in his arrest and conviction.
U.S. Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Marriage ceremony’s arrest in social media posts. Patel mentioned Marriage ceremony was being transported to the U.S. after being apprehended Thursday evening in Mexico, the place U.S. authorities imagine the previous Olympian been hiding for greater than a decade.
“It is a large 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 will likely be delivered to 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 mentioned 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 residence nation within the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis. Olympic data present he participated in a single males’s snowboarding occasion, parallel large 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 mentioned his aliases included “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy” and “James Conrad Kin.”
In November, U.S. Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi introduced that he had additionally been indicted on costs of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia to assist him keep away from extradition to the U.S.
Authorities mentioned Marriage ceremony and co-conspirators used a Canadian web site referred to as “The Soiled Information” to publish {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 costs in Canada that date again to 2015, in line 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 data present. Federal prosecutors in 2024 mentioned 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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