Calgary man accused in Ryan Wedding drug trafficking case seeking bail during extradition

The lawyer for a Calgary man arrested in connection with alleged Canadian drug kingpin Ryan Wedding says his client is not a flight risk or a public danger and should get bail.

Allistair Chapman, 33, faces extradition to California on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to retaliate against a witness and other offences.

His lawyer, Noel O’Brien, asked court Wednesday for Chapman to be released on a $500,000 surety guaranteed by his parents, saying he would stay with them and abide by a curfew.

Chapman, he said, has nowhere else to go.

“He has no criminal record. He has enormous ties to the community. He was raised in the city. He does not have access to enormous amounts of cash,” O’Brien said.

“He does not have the facility to disappear anywhere and, particularly in this day and age, where is this young man going to go?”

Such hearings are normally under a publication ban, but in this case neither the Crown nor the defence asked for one.

Chapman and nine others were arrested last year in an FBI investigation into an international drug trafficking organization allegedly run by Wedding, a former Team Canada Olympic snowboarder-turned-fugitive.

Wedding is in custody in the United States.

U.S. prosecutors allege Chapman helped arrange the killing of a government informant by providing the man’s photo to a co-accused and paying for it to be posted online so the witness could be located before testifying.

The informant was later shot dead at a restaurant in Colombia.

O’Brien said the American allegation doesn’t link Chapman to a murder plot.

He said his client is accused of posting a quote that the victim “was in fact a snitch or a rat.”

“There’s no indication that Mr. Chapman was told, ‘We’re going to kill this guy.”‘

O’Brien said a number of other accused in the case have already been released on bail.

He noted Chapman has not been outside of Canada for 10 years and has no ties to any foreign country.

The judge is expected to reserve his decision.