The alleged chief of the crime known as “the dictator”, accused of orchestrating the 2023 fatal shooting of an innocent couple in Caledon, Ontario. – He will declare himself innocent, his lawyer told CBC News.
Andrew Clark is described by US researchers as the “co-leader” of a transnational drug manipulation empire, along with former Canadian Olympic snowboarding Ryan Wedding. Wedding It was recently added to the FBI list of 10 fugitives more Wteded, with an American reward of $ 10 million offered by information that leads to its arrest.
Clark, 34, was transferred to the custody of us Last month in an unprecedented Mexican extradition operation aimed at figures linked to the poster. The strongly armed troops in trucks descended in a shopping center restaurant in the Guadalajara area for Clark arrest in October, according to the video of the social networks verified by CBC News.
Clark, who previously lived in the Toronto area, made his first appearance in the Federal Court of the United States in Phoenix last week. It is scheduled to be transported to Los Angeles to be tried for eight positions for serious crimes related to an alleged conspiracy that deals with cocaine and four murders.
The four murders, including those of the couple in Caledon, occurred in Ontario, but are being prosecuted in the United States, since they were carried out in support of a criminal scheme with roots in California.
“This will be a non -guilty statement,” said Clark’s lawyer, Matthew Lombard, in an email.
Property records and online publications suggest that Clark sold his home in Burlington, Ontario, and moved to Mexico in 2022. In a photo distributed by US prosecutors, he is seen with a cordon in the city of Toronto. A municipal spokesman refused to say if Clark previously worked for the city.
The authorities have said that the wedding and the alleged US $ 1 billion network, linked to the notorious Sinaloa Cartel of Mexico, used rental houses in California to help move tons of cocaine and fentanyl throughout North America.
The details of the extensive research of the FBI, described in the judicial records, read as a Hollywood script.
The United States federal agents accompanied a former drug trafficker to Toronto, where he had a recording device to meet with alleged conspirators in a bodywork workshop. In California, the researchers asked the National Guard to examine a cocaine agreement of an aircraft.
The RCMP said the wedding, 43, “continues to represent one of the greatest threats of organized crime for Canada, even as a fugitive.”
The researchers said the wedding and Clark orchestrated the November 2023 murders From Jagtar and Harbhajan Sidhu, an Indian couple who visits their children in Caledon, northwest of Toronto. His 28 -year -old daughter, Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, witnessed the uproar and was shot 13 times. He survived but suffered “injuries that alter life,” police said.
The authorities said that the innocent family was attacked by mistake in a stolen drug sending. The gunman has not been identified.
In judicial documents, American prosecutors claim that Clark then sent a hired assassin in Toronto known as “Mr. Perfect” a list of objectives and arranged to attend “military training” in Mexico last year. Subsequently, the alleged gunman, Malik Damion Cunningham, supposedly wrote to Clark: “I am what you call now Elite thanks to your brother.”
Days later, in a Niagara Falls, Ontario, Driveway, Cunningham supposedly shot a single shot at the head of a cross -border drug renown for $ 100,000, “more expenses.” Encryption communications suggest that Clark supplied the shooter two Gock guns and a 2023 Ford Explorer explorer as an escape vehicle, according to judicial documents.
A key informant of the FBI met with a wedding and Clark in a Starbucks in Mexico City in January 2024, as part of the investigation. According to judicial documents, the man carried a cable and registered Clark explaining that he sends two to three tons of cocaine to Canada per month, including 600 kilograms to Alberta.
The wedding, Clark and another 14 supposed accomplices were accused by a federal grand jury in California last year. Four coacked, including Cunningham, remain in custody in Ontario and extradition to the United States
It is scheduled that another alleged accomplice, Gurreet Singh, appears on Thursday in a Toronto court in the center of Toronto, while asking him to release him on bail, waiting for extradition. American prosecutors have urged the release of Singh, saying that it has a “substantial” flight risk.
“The researchers are aware that the wedding continues with traffic drugs while hiding,” wrote the attorneys of the United States Maria Jhai and Lyndsi Allsop in a letter dated February 21 and presented themselves as an exhibition in the Higher Court of Justice of Ontario. “It should not be given to the wedding access to an additional loyal through the launch of Singh on bail.”
Prosecutors claim that the wedding had to intervene to ensure the release of Singh last summer, after the members of the poster kidnapped him in Mexico for a drug debt of $ 600,000.
If you have a news advice related to this story, contact the senior reporter of CBC News Thomas Daigle by email: thomas.daigle@cbc.ca.
