MONTREAL — Two men described by police as former Hells Angels were arraigned Friday -- one on 13 murder charges, the other on weapons offences.

Andre Chouinard, 43, was charged with gangsterism, drug trafficking and 13 counts of murder. He was arrested early Friday in Ayer's Cliff, Que., about 250 kilometres southeast of Montreal.

Police said Friday they had been looking for Chouinard ever since a major crackdown on organized crime in the spring of 2001.

Chouinard's wife, 40, was also arrested and faces a charge of being an accessory after the fact.

Just a few hours before Chouinard's arrest, police nabbed Richard Vallee, 45, in a downtown Montreal convenience store, six years after he escaped from police custody in a local hospital.

Vallee, who was charged in New York with murder in the death of an informant in an automobile explosion in 1993, was arraigned Friday on charges of possessing a prohibited weapon.

Vallee had been on the lam since escaping from a Montreal hospital in June 1997, two days before he was to be extradited to the United States.

Quebec provincial police said Vallee underwent plastic surgery and assumed a new identity to avoid detection.

Investigators determined he fled to Costa Rica but returned to Montreal on March 25.

Vallee slipped Montreal police on April 11 when he gave them a false name after being arrested for driving under the influence and possession of a prohibited firearm.

Cmdr. Pierre Cadieux of Montreal police said Friday investigators at the time had no reason to doubt Vallee's story. To them, he was Guy Turner, a well-dressed gentleman from Costa Rica in Montreal to purchase some equipment.

"He really looked like a businessman and we didn't doubt his story," Cadieux said. "Everything he told police was credible, that he lived in Costa Rica and owned an underwater diving school."

Cadieux said Vallee showed police identification documents including a passport, driver's licence and credit card under his fictitious identity.

Police seized his passport and released him on a promise to appear in court.

Cadieux said that fingerprint analysis is not instantaneous and can take up to a day to determine whether someone is lying about his identity.

"It's regrettable," he said, "but police never thought they had a suspected biker gang member in their presence."

It was finally fingerprint evidence that led police to Vallee.

Chouinard was a well-known biker. His name is mentioned frequently in affidavits involving the Hells Angels, including one pertaining to Guy Lepage, a former Montreal cop turned biker chauffeur.

The U.S. documents name a number of Hells Angels as participants in a cocaine smuggling plot, including Hells kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher, Michel Rose and Chouinard -- all three Nomads, the elite Hells chapter in Quebec believed to be behind an attempt to monopolize street drug sales.

But only Lepage was sought for extradition. He was sent to Miami in August 2002.

Provincial police Cpl. Francois Dore said the Vallee and Chouinard cases were not related, but one expert has his doubts.

"I don't really believe in coincidences," said Yves Lavigne, a journalist and author who has written extensively about the Hells Angels. "To have two fugitive Hells Angels caught within five hours of each other -- and have police expect us to believe that one didn't rat the other out -- is highly doubtful."

Vallee and Chouinard are to return to court on Wednesday.