RCMP was told of Ryan Wedding's imminent arrest days in advance, commissioner says

U.S. authorities alerted the RCMP about Ryan Wedding's imminent arrest days before he was taken into U.S. custody in Mexico last week, Commissioner Mike Duheme has told CBC News.

The revelation marks the clearest indication yet that investigators knew of the longtime fugitive's whereabouts before Jan. 22, when the Mexican government said Wedding "voluntarily surrendered."

A clearer timeline has since emerged of an operation that involved both Mexican security forces and the same elite FBI unit recently involved in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas.

Duheme said he was told to be in Ontario, Calif. — the Los Angeles suburb Wedding was flown to on a U.S. Justice Department jet on Jan. 23 — "to be there for the arrival of Ryan Wedding."

"I would say probably three days before flying out, I was informed just to be on standby, and what was unfolding," Duheme said in an interview that will air on CBC's Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.

The RCMP had sought Wedding since 2015, when he was charged in Montreal in connection with a large-scale cocaine-import conspiracy. He was indicted a decade later in the U.S. on murder and drug-trafficking charges, and added to the FBI's list of 10 most-wanted fugitives last March.

Authorities allege the former Olympic snowboarder born in Thunder Bay, Ont., ran a violent and sophisticated cocaine-smuggling ring linked to Mexico's notorious Sinaloa cartel. Wedding has pleaded not guilty to the 17 federal charges he faces in California.

Duheme described Wedding as "probably one of the biggest criminals" he's encountered in his career spanning more than 35 years as a Mountie.

According to a CBC review of public flight records, the U.S. government-owned Boeing jet that transported Wedding to southern California had been flown to Mexico from Virginia the day before his arrest. 

FBI director Kash Patel said he happened to be in Mexico "on a previously planned trip" to meet with Mexican government officials when Wedding was taken into U.S. custody.

Patel returned to the U.S. hours later on the same jet as Wedding and Alejandro Castillo, another fugitive recently captured in Mexico. The FBI director appeared before the cameras when each man was escorted off the plane in handcuffs.

Patel, Duheme and other officials later spoke to reporters from the tarmac, with the jet as a backdrop, but declined to provide specifics about the operation that had unfolded.

Six days later, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum appeared to acknowledge for the first time the FBI's involvement in Wedding's arrest.

The Wall Street Journal reported that around the time Mexican security forces caught up with Wedding last week, the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) got involved as well. The agency describes the HRT "an elite group of agents" who "deploy in any environment or conditions," for situations such as high-risk arrests or undercover operations.