LIMA, Peru (AP) — The chief suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway will not challenge the Peruvian government’s decision to extradite him to the United States, his attorney told The Associated Press Tuesday.
FILE – Dutch teen Joran van der Sloot, 18, enters his family’s car as his mother Anita closes the door after he was conditionally released from the KAI jail in San Nicolas, Aruba, Sept. 3, 2005. Van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway on a Dutch Caribbean island, is facing extradition from Peru in 2023 to face criminal charges in the United States, while he has never been charged in connection with her disappearance. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch, File)
Attorney Máximo Altéz said Joran van der Sloot, told him in a letter that “he will go to the United States.” The Dutchman wrote the letter from a maximum-security prison in the Andes, where he is serving a 28-year sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman.
Earlier this month, the government of Peru announced that it would temporarily transfer custody of Van der Sloot to authorities in the U.S. to face trial on extortion and wire fraud charges.
Altéz said he does not know the exact date his client will be transferred but said it could be as early as June.
Holloway, who lived in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, was 18 when she was last seen during a trip with classmates to the Caribbean island of Aruba. She vanished after a night with friends at a nightclub, leaving a mystery that sparked years of news coverage and countless true-crime podcasts. She was last seen leaving a bar with van der Sloot, who was a student at an international school on the island.
Van der Sloot was identified as a suspect and detained weeks later, along with two Surinamese brothers. Holloway’s body was never found, and no charges were filed in the case. A judge later declared Holloway dead.
The federal charges filed in Alabama against van der Sloot stem from an accusation that he tried to extort the Holloway family in 2010, promising to lead them to her body in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A grand jury indicted him that year on one count each of wire fraud and extortion.
FILE – A sign of Natalee Holloway, an Alabama 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. The government of Peru on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, issued an executive order allowing the temporary extradition to the United States of Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch, File)
Also in 2010, van der Sloot was arrested in Peru for the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, who was killed five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.
Peruvian prosecutors accused van der Sloot 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. He pleaded guilty in 2012.
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the U.S. allows a suspect 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.
