Six Arrested, Three Named, and a Charge Sheet That Says Firearms While the Seizure List Says One: the SPVM’s Armed-Violence Squad Closes a Sud-Ouest Drug Line Said to Sell to Vulnerable People, and Publishes Not a Single Weight (September 18, 2026)
MONTREAL — The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal announced on Friday, September 18, 2026 that it had arrested five men and one woman the day before over what it describes as a drug trafficking network operating mainly in Le Sud-Ouest borough and reselling illicit substances to vulnerable people. Four drug types are listed. Not one of them carries a weight. One firearm was recovered, and it is not described. Three of the six are named; the other three, including the only woman among them, are not.
The Singular Firearm and the Plural Count
The seizure list is explicit and singular: une arme à feu — one firearm — along with ammunition. The charge line is explicit and plural: the three who appeared in custody face counts that include possession d’armes à feu prohibées, possession of prohibited firearms, plural.
There are ordinary explanations for that gap. A charge can be laid on a weapon that was never recovered, or on more than one accused for the same weapon, or the plural may simply be the standard formulation of the count as it appears on the docket. The communiqué offers none of them, and this briefing does not pick one. What is on the record is that the SPVM has published one firearm and charged in the plural, and has not explained the difference.
Nor is the one firearm described. No make, no model, no calibre, no statement of whether it was restricted, prohibited or unregistered, no round count for the ammunition, and no statement of whether it was loaded or where in the searched premises it was found.
What the SPVM Published
- Six arrests, September 17, 2026: five men and one woman, described as linked to a drug trafficking network operating principally in the Sud-Ouest borough.
- The alleged business model: the communiqué says the network was engaged in reselling illicit substances to vulnerable people — à des personnes vulnérables. It does not define the term or say how the conclusion was reached.
- Drugs seized: cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine and methamphetamine, characterised collectively as divers stupéfiants de rue. No weight, no dosage-unit count and no street value for any of the four.
- Also seized: one firearm, ammunition, more than $10,000 in Canadian currency, and a batch of counterfeit $100 bills. The bills are not counted and no face-value total is given.
- Three named accused, all of whom appeared in custody at the Palais de justice de Montréal on September 17: Tesfaye Roberts, 29; Bahktier Hossain, 26; Awrangazeb Hossain, 31.
- Three unnamed accused, who will appear at a later date that is not given. No ages, no cities and no charges are published for them.
- The unit: the Équipe multisectorielle dédiée aux armes à feu — EMAF — for the Sud region, with support from several SPVM specialized units and neighbourhood stations.
Two Surnames That Match, and a Force That Does Not Say Whether They Mean Anything
Two of the three named accused share a surname: Bahktier Hossain, 26, and Awrangazeb Hossain, 31. Five years separate them. The communiqué does not state whether they are related, does not give an address for either, and does not describe any role for any of the six within the alleged network. There is no ringleader in this document and no hierarchy. There are six people, three of them named, and a shared allegation.
The woman among the six is not identified. None of the three named accused is presented as female, which places her among the three whose court date has not been set. Her age is not published and neither is her city.
The Collectifs, and What the Force Says It Is Doing
The communiqué attaches the file to the SPVM’s stratégie des collectifs, which the force describes as bringing together police and civilian personnel of varied expertise, with a mandate to focus on individuals displaying high-risk armed-violence behaviour and to act preventively by offering them alternatives to violence, supported by community and institutional partners.
That is the force’s own framing of its programme and is reproduced here as such. It is not an evidentiary claim about any of the six people arrested, and nothing in the communiqué states that any of them was a subject of the collectifs before September 17.
What Is Not Reported
No weight, dosage-unit count or street value for the cocaine, the cannabis, the amphetamine or the methamphetamine. No make, model, calibre, classification or loaded status for the firearm, and no round count for the ammunition. No count or face value for the counterfeit $100 bills, and no statement of whether a counterfeiting count has been laid. No exact cash figure beyond “more than $10,000.” No number of search warrants, no addresses and no street names within the borough. No itemised charge sheet — only “several counts, including” two. No names, ages, cities or charges for three of the six arrested. No next court date for those three, and no bail outcome for the three who appeared. No file or event number. No officer quoted, no rank, no spokesperson. No time of publication on the communiqué. No investigative start date and no statement of how long the file ran.
And no criminal organization is named anywhere in the document — no street gang, no mafia, no outlaw motorcycle club. The involvement of a squad whose mandate is armed violence is a fact about which desk holds the file, and this briefing treats it as nothing more than that.
These allegations have not been tested in court, and Tesfaye Roberts, Bahktier Hossain and Awrangazeb Hossain are presumed innocent, as are the three people the SPVM has not named.
Le Sud-Ouest — September 17 to September 18, 2026
Primary Sources
- Service de police de la Ville de Montréal: « Démantèlement d’un réseau de trafic de stupéfiants : le SPVM arrête six suspects », communiqué 16234, dated 18 septembre 2026 on the page. No time of publication is displayed. Source for the six arrests, the composition of five men and one woman, the Sud-Ouest borough, the resale to vulnerable people, the four drug types, the single firearm and ammunition, the figure of more than $10,000, the counterfeit $100 bills, the three named accused and their ages, the September 17 appearance in custody at the Palais de justice de Montréal, the two charge types quoted, the later appearance of the other three, and the role of the EMAF Région Sud with SPVM specialized units and neighbourhood stations.
- The same communiqué is the source for the stratégie des collectifs passage and for the Info-Crime Montréal appeal, including the reward of up to $5,000 with conditions.
- The observation that the seizure list reads one firearm while the charge line reads prohibited firearms in the plural is drawn directly from the wording of the communiqué. The SPVM does not address the discrepancy, and no explanation for it is asserted here.
- The inference that the unnamed woman is among the three who have not yet appeared follows from the fact that none of the three named accused is presented as female. The communiqué does not state this, and it is this briefing’s reading of the document.
- The note that two of the named accused share a surname is an observation from the document. The SPVM states no relationship between them and none is alleged here.
- The SPVM names no criminal organization, street gang, mafia or outlaw motorcycle club in this file, and none is named or inferred here. No profile page on this site is linked, because no organization covered by one has been named by police in connection with this file.
- These allegations have not been tested in court.
