Ammon Bundy: Oregon militia leader arrested in shoot-out

The leader of an armed militia involved in a weeks-long protest in Oregon has been arrested after a shoot-out with US federal agents. One person was killed.

Ammon Bundy and several of his fellow protesters were pulled over by police on Highway 395 yesterday, according to The Oregonian. Five men were arrested, including Bundy's brother, Ryan, who suffered non-threatening injuries during the incident and was treated in hospital.

Police have not identified the man who died but he has been named by his daughter as Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, a rancher who had acted as a spokesman for the group.

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Finicum had become known as the "Tarp Man" after he was filmed giving interviews under a rough blue tarpaulin shelter, says Gawker. Arianna Finicum Brown said her father was a "good man, through and through".

She added: "He would never ever want to hurt somebody, but he does believe in defending freedom and he knew the risks involved."

The Bundy brothers have achieved notoriety in the US since 2 January, when they led an armed militia onto the Malheur Wildlife Reserve. The group illegally occupied the land to protest against the role of the federal government in the area following the imprisonment of two ranchers for illegally setting fires on their own land within the reserve.

The militia claim the federal government has often taken land illegally from ranchers over the past decades.

Oregon judge Steve Grasty, who has been asking the protesters to leave the reserve for weeks, said he was "deeply disappointed" there had been a death, reports The Guardian.

Asked if the stand-off was finished, he said: "I don't know that it's over. I have no idea what is happening at the refuge. I'm glad to see this winding down, but we wanted this to come to a peaceful end and it didn't."