Associated Press – Dutchman Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the unsolved disappearance of Alabama student Natalee Holloway will be extradited to the United States. Peru’s government issued an executive order on Wednesday allowing the extradition.
The Peruvian Embassy in Washington told The Associated Press that the order allows for the temporary extradition of Dutchman Joran 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 Van der Sloot in the case. A judge later pronounced Holloway dead.
U.S. prosecutors allege Van der Sloot accepted $25,000 in cash from Holloway’s family in exchange for a promise to carry it on his body in early 2010, just before he left for Peru. Holloway was from Mountain Brook, Alabama.
Van der Sloot is serving 28 years in prison in Peru after being convicted of murdering 21-year-old Peruvian student Stephany Flores after meeting her in a Lima casino in 2010.
The killing came five years 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 more and more cross-border traffic of people, our institutions are up to date to ensure that criminals are brought to justice,” Edgar Alfredo Rebaza, director of the Office of International Judicial Cooperation and Extraditions of the Peru of the National Prosecutor’s Office. , he said in a statement. “We will continue to cooperate on legal matters with allies such as the United States and many others with whom we have extradition treaties.”
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the United States allows a suspect to be temporarily extradited to face trial. It requires that the prisoner “be returned” after legal proceedings “against that person, in accordance with conditions determined” by both countries, have been concluded.
Van der Sloot pleaded guilty in January 2012 to one count of murder in Flores’ murder.
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 her and then strangling her in the hotel room.
Van der Sloot could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. It was unclear if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. More than a decade ago, he told a Peruvian judge he would fight efforts to extradite him to the U.S.
