Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, an American who disappeared during a school trip in Aruba, will be extradited from Peru to the United States, his family said on Wednesday.
Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, announced the news in a statement.
“Almost exactly eighteen years later, its perpetrator, Joran van der Sloot, has been extradited to Birmingham to answer for his crimes,” she said.
Peruvian authorities have agreed to extradite Van der Sloot, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Peruvian Stephany Flores.
Joran van der Sloot is the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway. He is serving a prison sentence in Peru for the murder of a 21-year-old woman. (Getty Images, AP)
The government agreed to temporarily hand over the Dutch citizen to US authorities “for his trial in the United States for the alleged commission of the crimes of extortion and fraud, the complaint of Elizabeth Ann Holloway”, Minister of Justice and Human Rights of Peru, Daniel Maurate Romero, said in a statement.
Van der Sloot is one of the main suspects in the disappearance of Holloway, who failed to show up for his flight home on May 30, 2005, in Aruba.
The 18-year-old was last seen leaving a bar that morning with the young Dutchman. His body was never found and the ensuing searches for the young woman would attract intense media scrutiny and worldwide attention. She was declared dead in 2014.
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Flores was killed five years to the day that Holloway, who was from Alabama, disappeared. Van der Sloot told police he killed the woman in Peru in a fit of rage after she discovered on his laptop her connection to Holloway’s disappearance. Police forensic experts disputed the claim.
