LIMA, Peru (AP) — The chief suspect within the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American pupil Natalee Holloway is being transferred to a jail close to Peru’s capital forward of his pending extradition to the USA to face costs linked to her vanishing, officers stated Saturday.
The federal government of Peru, the place Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot was serving a 28-year sentence for the homicide of a Peruvian girl, approved his extradition to the U.S. in Could.
Máximo Altez, van der Sloot’s lawyer, stated is shopper was being taken by land from the Challapalca jail in Peru’s southern Andes to the Piedras Gordas jail on the outskirts of Lima.
“Within the coming days, the INPE (Nationwide Penitentiary Institute) will hand over the condemned man to Interpol Peru with the objective of handing him over to U.S. authorities from the FBI,” stated a press release from the INPE launched Saturday.
Altez stated that when the bureaucratic procedures are accomplished and van der Sloot is given a medical examination, his shopper will probably be transferred to the U.S. He estimated the extradition may happen on Tuesday, however Peruvian officers didn’t verify today.
Van der Sloot has agreed to be despatched to the USA the place he faces trial for alleged extortion and wire fraud costs linked to the Holloway case, his lawyer stated.
When requested by the Related Press why his shopper agreed, the lawyer responded: “He’s imprisoned within the worst jail on the planet,” referring the maximum-security Challapalca jail.
“Any jail in the USA is a five-star lodge” as compared, he stated.
Altez stated that, in line with the treaty between Peru and the USA, van der Sloot is being extradited to the U.S. quickly for one yr to face authorized proceedings and within the occasion of a delay, this era will be prolonged for an additional yr.
“On the finish of this, he needs to be returned to Peru,” Altez stated. He’ll spend “at most two years in the USA.”
Altez stated his shopper denies being responsible of the crimes of extortion and fraud.
Holloway, who lived in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, was 18 when she was final seen throughout a visit with classmates to the Caribbean island of Aruba. She vanished after an evening with buddies at a nightclub, leaving a thriller that sparked years of stories protection and numerous true-crime podcasts. She was final seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot, who was a pupil at a world faculty on the island.
Van der Sloot was recognized as a suspect and detained weeks later, together with two Surinamese brothers. Holloway’s physique was by no means discovered, and no costs had been filed within the case. A decide later declared Holloway lifeless.
The federal costs filed in Alabama towards van der Sloot stem from an accusation that he tried to extort the Holloway household in 2010, promising to make them her physique in change for a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars}. A grand jury indicted him that yr on one depend every of wire fraud and extortion, every of which is punishable by as much as 20 years in jail.
Additionally in 2010, van der Sloot was arrested in Peru for the homicide of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, who was killed 5 years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.
Peruvian prosecutors accused van der Sloot of killing Flores, a enterprise pupil from a distinguished household, to rob her after studying she had gained cash on the on line casino the place the 2 met. They stated he killed her with “ferocity” and “cruelty,” beating then strangling her in his lodge room. He pleaded responsible in 2012.
Van der Sloot married a Peruvian girl in July 2014 in a ceremony at a most safety jail. He has been transferred from prisons in response to studies that he loved privileges similar to tv, web entry and a cellphone, and accusations that he had threatened to kill a warden.
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the U.S. permits a suspect to be quickly extradited to face trial within the different nation. It requires that the prisoner “be returned” after judicial proceedings are concluded “towards that individual, in accordance with circumstances to be decided by” each international locations.
