A Dutch prisoner, suspected of the 2005 disappearance of the young American Natalee Holloway, will not contest the decision to be extradited temporarily to the United States to be tried for the crimes of alleged extortion and fraud linked to the case of the disappeared woman, her lawyer said Tuesday.
Máximo Altéz, defense attorney for Dutchman Joran Van der Sloot, told The Associated Press that his client told him he was going to the United States in a letter he wrote to him from a prison in the Andes where he is serving a sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman in 2010. The lawyer does not know the date his client will be transferred to that country, although he said it could be in June.
In May, when Peru authorized the decision to temporarily send the Dutchman to the United States to stand trial for the crimes of alleged extortion and fraud linked to the case of the missing American, the lawyer said he was going to challenge the decision. Altez did not give reasons for the change of opinion. The United States has promised to return the Dutchman once he stands trial.
The extradition to the United States stems from an alleged attempt to profit from his relationship with the case of the missing Holloway student. An Alabama state grand jury indicted Van der Sloot in 2010 on fraud and extortion chargesand accused him of trying to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from the victim’s family.
The US attorney’s office alleges that Van der Sloot accepted $25,000 in cash from Holloway’s family in exchange for a promise of information about where his daughter was buried in 2010 just before traveling to Peru, where the Dutchman was sentenced that same year. to 28 years in prison for murdering a Peruvian.
Holloway disappeared in 2005, when he was 18 years old, during a trip with schoolmates to the island of Aruba. His disappearance after a night out with friends at a nightclub generated years of news coverage. She was last seen leaving a bar with Van der Sloot, who was then also 18 years old.
Van der Sloot was identified as a suspect and arrested weeks later along with two brothers from Suriname. Holloway’s body was never found and no charges were filed in the case. A judge later declared Holloway officially deceased.
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the United States allows for the temporary extradition of a suspect to face trial in either country.
Van der Sloot married a Peruvian in July 2014 in a ceremony at a maximum security prison in the Peruvian Andes.
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