Suspect in Natalee Holloway Disappearance Will Be Sent from Peru to U.S. to Face Fraud Charges
FILE – Joran van der Sloot sits in the courtroom before his sentencing at San Pedro prison in Lima, Peru, Jan. 13, 2012. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro, File)
The prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of Mountain Brook student Natalee Holloway on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba will be sent to the U.S.
Peru’s government issued an executive order Wednesday allowing the extradition to the United States of Dutchman Joran van der Sloot.
The Peruvian Embassy in Washington told The Associated Press the order allows for the temporary extradition of van der Sloot to be prosecuted for alleged extortion and wire fraud, charges stemming from the Holloway case.
Holloway’s body was never found, and no charges were filed against him in the case. A judge later declared Holloway dead.
Prosecutors in
FILE – A sign of Natalee Holloway, a Mountain Brook high school graduate who disappeared while on a graduation trip to Aruba, is seen on Palm Beach, in front of her hotel in Aruba, Friday, June 10, 2005, as a ribbon in her memory blows in the breeze. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch, File)
the U.S. allege Van der Sloot accepted $25,000 in cash from Holloway’s family in exchange for a promise to lead them to her body in early 2010, just before he went to Peru.
Van der Sloot is serving 28 years in prison in Peru for being convicted of murdering 21-year-old Peruvian student Stephany Flores after meeting her in a Lima casino in 2010.
The slaying occurred five years to the day after Holloway disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, where Van der Sloot lived. She was last seen leaving a bar with him.
“At a time when there is increasingly greater cross-border transit of people, our institutions are keeping up to ensure that criminals are brought to justice,” Edgar Alfredo Rebaza, director of Peru’s Office of International Judicial Cooperation and Extraditions of the National Prosecutor’s Office, said in a statement. “We will continue to collaborate on legal issues with allies such as the United States, and many others with which we have extradition treaties.”
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the U.S. allows a suspected to be temporarily extradited to face trial in the other country. It requires that the prisoner “be returned” after judicial proceedings are concluded “against that person, in accordance with conditions to be determined by” both countries.
Van der Sloot pleaded guilty in January 2012 to a murder charge in Flores’ slaying.
Prosecutors accused him of killing Flores, a business student from a prominent family, to rob her after learning she had won money at the casino where the two met. They said he killed her with “ferocity” and “cruelty,” beating then strangling her in his hotel room.
Van der Sloot could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday. It was not clear if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. More than a decade ago, he told a Peruvian judge that he would fight efforts to be extradited to the U.S.
Van der Sloot married a Peruvian woman in July 2014 in a ceremony at a maximum-security prison.
(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
