By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
A 38-year-old man convicted in the 2010 murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry may soon end up in an American prison.
The Mexican government began the extradition process of Heraclio “Laco” Osorio-Arellanes, who was arrested Wednesday in the state of Chihuahua on a provisional arrested warrant by the U.S., the Arizona Republic reports.
The Republic reports:
Osorio-Arellanes is the sixth of seven defendants taken into custody in connection with the killing of Terry, 40, in a nighttime gunbattle on Dec. 14, 2010, in a remote canyon near Rio Rico in Santa Cruz County, about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The gunbattle took place between Border Patrol agents who included Terry and a Mexican “rip crew” — criminal gangs that hide in the desert on the U.S. side of the border to rip off smugglers transporting drugs or migrants into the United States from Mexico.
Terry’s death touched off a major political controversy after it was revealed that two guns recovered after the Arizona shootout were linked to “Operation Fast and Furious,” a botched federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun-trafficking probe that lost track of hundreds of weapons.
The so-called “gun-walking” scandal resulted in the 2011 resignation of U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives in 2012 voted to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over a dispute concerning “Fast and Furious”-related documents.
