Rabih “Robby” Alkhalil

Convicted of first-degree murder twice, in two different provinces, over two different killings — and once while he was already a fugitive, having cut his way out of a B.C. jail with a plasma torch. Three years on Canada’s most-wanted list ended in Doha in September 2025. He has been sitting in Qatari custody ever since, and Canada still has no treaty to bring him home.

Rabih “Robby” Alkhalil.

Identity and Family

Rabih Alkhalil was born in 1987 to a Palestinian family that immigrated to Canada from Saudi Arabia in December 1990, settling in Surrey, British Columbia. He was the youngest of five brothers: Khalil (born 1981), Hisham — known as “Terry” — (1982), Mahmoud (1984), Nabil (1979 or 1980), and Rabih himself, known throughout his criminal career as “Robby.” Police describe him as 5′10″, roughly 166 pounds, of Middle Eastern ancestry with short black hair and brown eyes.

He has used a documented string of aliases and false identities over the years: Rabi, Robby, Robbi, Rabih Al Khalil, Philip Betencourt Furtado, and Philip Bettenecourt Furtado. He was arrested in Greece in 2013 travelling under a fake French passport while posing as a fashion designer, and was living under a different assumed identity when he was arrested in Qatar in 2025.

A Family Already at War Before He Was an Adult

The Alkhalils’ involvement in Metro Vancouver’s gang conflicts predates Rabih’s own criminal record by more than a decade. A feud with the rival Duhre crime group ignited around May 2000, reportedly after brother Nabil stabbed a Duhre associate in Surrey’s Holly Park. Violence followed quickly and did not spare the family: on January 18, 2001, 19-year-old Khalil Alkhalil was shot six times and killed at a Surrey apartment entrance. Less than three years later, on August 16, 2003, 19-year-old Mahmoud Alkhalil was killed in a shootout on the dance floor of Loft Six, a downtown Vancouver nightclub, in a clash involving Hells Angels members — the same club Rabih would later be closely allied with through the Wolfpack Alliance and his friendship with Larry Amero.

After losing two sons, the surviving family relocated to Ottawa in 2004, hoping to leave the violence behind. It did not work. Nabil was arrested in May 2005 after a 200 km/h police chase near Cornwall, Ontario, caught with 11 kilograms of cocaine; he was convicted of trafficking and a deportation order followed. Warned of a contract on his life, he fled the country in November 2010, breaching bail and forfeiting his parents’ $170,000 bond. He resurfaced briefly in 2013, arrested at Bogotá airport on a forged passport, then vanished into Mexico, where he became the family’s liaison to the Sinaloa Cartel — until he was shot dead by a bodyguard during a business dispute at a luxury car dealership near Mexico City on August 24, 2018.

The Raposo Contract — Toronto, 2012

Rabih’s own murder record begins with a cocaine deal that soured. John Raposo, a 35-year-old Toronto drug dealer, was in a deal to import 200 kilograms of cocaine with Nicola Nero, Martino Caputo and Alkhalil when the three came to believe Raposo had informed on Nero to police. Between April and June 2012 the three plotted to have him killed, steal the shipment, and split the proceeds three ways.

They hired Dean Wiwchar, a Vancouver associate, for a promised fee of $100,000. Caputo supplied addresses for Raposo’s home and for the Sicilian Sidewalk Café in Toronto’s Little Italy, where Raposo was a regular; Alkhalil passed those addresses on to Wiwchar. In coded text messages later produced at trial, Alkhalil referred to Raposo as “the ice cream boy” and told Wiwchar to “bang that one off.”

Wiwchar was arrested three days later. Alkhalil fled the country and was arrested in Greece in February 2013, extradited to Canada in February 2015, and stood trial with Nero, Caputo and Wiwchar in 2017. On May 11, 2017, a jury convicted all four of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. In January 2018, Alkhalil was sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years, plus a concurrent 20-year term for the conspiracy count — his first murder conviction, at age 30.

A Second Conviction While Already Serving a Life Sentence

The Raposo sentence did not end Alkhalil’s exposure. In August 2020, he was convicted in Montreal, under a separate investigation known as Project Loquace, of conspiracy to import and traffic cocaine, and was sentenced to eight years — a sentence Gangland Files’ sources describe as symbolic given the life term he was already serving. The conviction places a documented drug-trafficking network in Quebec alongside his Toronto murder conviction and, as the next section covers, a second murder conviction still to come out of British Columbia.

The Wolfpack, and the Bond With Larry Amero

Alkhalil is identified as one of the leading figures of the Wolfpack Alliance, the B.C.-based coalition that brought together his family’s network, the Red Scorpions, elements of the Independent Soldiers, and Hells Angels members including Larry Amero. Alkhalil’s role centred on cocaine supply — he is described as a key link to Mexican cartel sources, including the Sinaloa Cartel his brother Nabil later worked for directly. His closest tie inside the alliance was to Amero personally: the two are reported to have shared a luxury Montreal penthouse around 2011, a detail often used to illustrate the Vancouver-Montreal axis at the alliance’s core. The full story of that friendship, including the two cases where the pair were co-accused together, is covered in Larry Amero’s subject profile.

The Duhre and Dhak Killings — Vancouver, 2012

While the Raposo file was still working through the Ontario courts, a second, separate murder file was building against Alkhalil in British Columbia. Sandip “Dip” Duhre, a leader of the rival Dhak-Duhre group, was shot multiple times at close range while dining at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre hotel restaurant on January 17, 2012. The shooter, disguised as a patron, was again Dean Wiwchar. That November, Duhre’s ally Sukh Dhak was shot dead in Burnaby in a related plot.

Alkhalil and Amero stood trial together in B.C. Supreme Court beginning in June 2021, accused of orchestrating both killings. The trial was still underway in July 2022 when Alkhalil escaped custody — see below. Despite that, the trial concluded without him: in August 2022, a jury convicted Alkhalil, in absentia, of first-degree murder in the Duhre killing and conspiracy to commit murder in the Dhak plot. He was later sentenced to life with no parole eligibility for 25 years on the murder count and a concurrent 20 years on the conspiracy count — his second first-degree murder conviction, for a killing nine years before the verdict, delivered while he was a fugitive from the very trial that produced it.

Dean Wiwchar, the hitman in both the Raposo and Duhre killings, was separately convicted at trial of the Raposo murder in 2017. For the Duhre and Dhak files specifically, he had originally faced a first-degree murder charge; he pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court in October 2025 to two counts of conspiracy to commit murder covering both killings. Gangland Files’ coverage of that plea is here.

The Escape — North Fraser Pretrial Centre, July 21, 2022

Alkhalil escaped while still on trial for the Duhre and Dhak murders. At approximately 6:48 p.m. on July 21, 2022, a white Ford Econoline van carrying Alkhalil and two men posing as contractors left the North Fraser Pretrial Centre in Port Coquitlam and drove west on Kingsway Avenue. Reporting on the escape states the two accomplices used a plasma cutting torch to cut him out, and that facility staff did not notice he was gone for close to twenty minutes. Coquitlam RCMP were not notified until 7:30 p.m.

The investigation stumbled almost immediately: the day after the escape, police released photos of two men they said were the suspected accomplices, then were forced to admit less than 48 hours later that the images were stock photography pulled from the internet, not the actual suspects. A former B.C. Solicitor General later called it one of the most inept investigations into an escaped murder suspect he had seen in three decades in policing.

Canada’s Most Wanted

Alkhalil was named to the RCMP’s BOLO (Be On the Lookout) program’s most-wanted list following the escape. Reporting from October 2022 cites a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to his arrest, available until the following May; a separate BOLO listing update from April 2024 cites a $100,000 reward as Alkhalil held the fourth spot on the program’s 25 most-wanted list. Those are two distinct figures from two distinct points in the manhunt, and this profile reports both as published rather than resolving them into one number. An Interpol Red Notice was also issued.

The Escape Crew Faces Justice

The investigation into who helped Alkhalil escape moved slowly at first — it was transferred to CFSEU-BC in February 2023, with RCMP Federal Policing joining in December 2023 — but it did eventually produce charges. In September 2025, three men were charged with conspiracy to commit prison breach and prison breach: Edward Ayoub, 48, of Ottawa; John Potvin, 49, of Ottawa; and Ryan Van Gool, 46, of Harrison Hot Springs, B.C. Van Gool was separately charged in relation to an unrelated January 2024 shooting in Maple Ridge.

Potvin was arrested in Spain on September 19, 2025 — the same month Alkhalil himself was located in Qatar — and was extradited to Canada under the Canada-Spain extradition treaty, arriving in Vancouver in January 2026 to face trial. Separately, a warrant was issued in May 2026 for Naila Sheikh, a former North Fraser Pretrial Centre correctional officer whom Global News reported was Alkhalil’s case manager. Global News reported that she is charged with identity fraud, breach of trust and unauthorized use of a computer, that she turned herself in on June 29, 2026, and that she was released on conditions. That reporting did not say whether her charges are connected to Alkhalil’s escape, and no court outcome has been reported. None of the four people named has been tried, and none of these allegations has been tested in court.

Capture in Qatar, and Where Things Stand Now

After three years on the run, Alkhalil was taken into custody in Doha, Qatar in September 2025, arrested under an alias by Qatari authorities working with the RCMP, CFSEU-BC and Interpol. “We have a really good relationship with the Qatar officials,” CFSEU-BC media relations officer Cpl. Sarbjit Sangha told reporters at the time, adding she was confident he would be “returned to Canada sooner rather than later.”

That confidence has not yet been borne out in public reporting. Canada has no bilateral extradition treaty with Qatar — legal experts have called Qatar “fugitive heaven” for exactly this reason — so any return depends on diplomatic negotiation, potentially reliant on the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime as a substitute legal basis, or a prisoner-swap-style arrangement rather than a routine extradition request. Global News reported on June 29, 2026 that he was still overseas, and Gangland Files’ July 27, 2026 update found no resolution. As of October 20, 2026, no return to Canada has been publicly reported, and this profile will be revisited the moment one is.