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Posted on Fri, Aug. 25, 2006

U.S. turns over Mexican officer wanted in drug-related massacre

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - U.S. authorities on Friday turned over a Mexican police officer wanted in connection with five drug-related killings in his native country.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and U.S. marshals captured Jose Ines Gallardo-Rodriguez, 29, on Tuesday. He was turned him over to Mexican authorities Friday at the border crossing at San Ysidro, said Jim Hayes from ICE detention and removal operations.

Gallardo is the last to be caught of five suspects - four of them police officers - charged in the May 2005 shooting, officials said.

Mexican authorities said Erikson Antonio Zavala Zamora, leader of a drug cartel in the state of Sinaloa, paid the suspects $8,000 to help him in the kidnapping, torture and shooting of seven people Zavala believed to be federal agent informants.

Five of the seven died - their bodies found near a Sinaloa military camp - but two survived and gave authorities details of the attack.