COLOMBIA EXPELS CANADIAN DRUG FUGITIVE

BOGOTA (CP) - A Quebec man convicted in one of Canada's largest drug
busts has been expelled from Colombia after allegedly becoming
embroiled in a drug dispute with leftist guerrillas.

Two years after he escaped from a Montreal halfway house while on day
parole, Jean Raymond Boulanger, 54, was put on a commercial flight for
Montreal via Mexico City, a Colombian state security police spokesman
said yesterday.

RCMP Cpl. Leo Monbourquette would say only that Boulanger would be
arrested before Monday.

Boulanger was allegedly embroiled in a drug dispute with Colombian
leftist guerrillas over a payment.

He was arrested Wednesday after reportedly being kidnapped, and then
released by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
the country's largest insurgent group.

Boulanger was arrested in 1992 after piloting a twin-engine plane from
Colombia with more than 4,000 kilograms of cocaine aboard, worth more
than $1 billion at the time, to Quebec.

He was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

But he ran away from the halfway house in 1998 after being granted day
parole a year earlier than scheduled.

Police in Colombia said Boulanger was also accused in 1992 of
smuggling hashish into the United States, where he also faces charges
of forgery and money-laundering.