2023-05-12 00:45:48
- Writing
- BBC News World
image source, Getty Images
Joran van der Sloot during his murder trial in Lima in 2011.
Joran van der Sloot, the main suspect in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, will be extradited from Peru to the United States to face criminal trial.
The news comes 18 years after Holloway disappeared during her high school graduation trip to the island of Aruba in May 2005.
The case acquired strong media relevance and the main unknown remained unresolved: what happened to the young woman, who was only 18 years old at the time.
Van der Sloot, a 35-year-old Dutch citizen, is in Challapalca prison, in southern Peru, where is serving a 28-year sentence prison for murdering a young Peruvian student in 2005.
In the United States, he has pending since 2010 federal charges of fraud and extortion .
They accuse him of having received US$25,000 from Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, in exchange for information – which he did not provide – about the whereabouts of the young woman’s body.
image source, Getty Images
Beth has led the campaign to seek justice and answers for the disappearance of her daughter Natalee in 2005.
Natalee Holloway’s body was never found and an Alabama judge officially declared her dead in 2012,
Meanwhile, Van der Sloot was arrested several times in connection with the disappearance of the teenager but was never charged.
The suspect will be temporarily handed over to the US and will return to Peru after the trial. A 2001 treaty between Peru and the US allows suspects to be extradited for trial, but requires their return at the conclusion of judicial proceedings.
His youth and meeting Natalee
Born in the Netherlands on August 6, 1987, Van Der Sloot rose from a privileged young man to a convicted murderer.
He grew up in a wealthy family – his father was a lawyer and judge, and his mother an art teacher – who moved to the Dutch island of Aruba in 1990.
He studied at the International School of Aruba, a distinguished private study center, where he stood out in various sports but also for his rebellious attitude, according to sources close to the media.
In an interview with the American media ABC in 2010, his mother confessed that Joran had a marked tendency to lie and sneaked out of the house at night to visit casinos.
image source, Getty Images
Van Der Sloot near her parents’ home in Aruba in 2007, two years after Natalee’s disappearance.
Nightlife was the meeting point for Van Der Sloot with Natalee, whom he met in a bar in the city of Oranjestad, the capital of Aruba, on May 30, 2005. He was 17 years old and she was 18.
That night la young man left the premises eIn the company of the Dutchman and two of his friendsThe Kalpoe brothers, ages 18 and 21.
That was the last time she was seen alive.
Escapes and crimes
As the case reached strong international relevance, the suspect gave interviews to various media to defend his innocence, although he offered different versions of what happened on the night of May 30, 2005.
He and the two brothers were arrested in Aruba in 2005 and 2007, but both times they were released for lack of evidence.
Between 2007 and 2008, a television reporter befriended Van Der Sloot by posing as a drug dealer. In this way, he recorded with a hidden camera a conversation about the facts in which the suspect confessed to having thrown the victim’s body into the sea from a shipalthough he assured that he did not kill her but suffered a sudden death when they were both alone on the beach at night.
The recording was not enough for the Aruba Prosecutor’s Office to arrest the young man, who retracted his words and claimed to have lied to impress the alleged trafficker.
After spending some time in Thailand, where he would have been involved in a shady business of trafficking in women, according to the investigation of a Dutch journalist, in 2010 he returned to Aruba shortly after his father died of a heart attack.
Earlier that year, he contacted the lawyer for Natalee Holloway’s mother and received US$25,000 from the victim’s family in exchange for revealing the whereabouts of the young woman’s body.
But He gave them false information and fled with the money to Lima. in May 2010, a month before the Alabama court filed charges for the alleged extortion.
image source, Getty Images
The murder caused a strong commotion in Peru, where many citizens expressed their solidarity with the victim.
Precisely on May 30 – the same day the young American disappeared five years earlier – Van Der Sloot murdered 21-year-old Peruvian Stephany Floresbusiness student and daughter of a prominent Peruvian businessman.
The young woman was found dead with signs of violence in a hotel room in the Lima neighborhood of Miraflores under the name of the Dutchman, who fled the place.
Security camera recordings showed the two playing cards in a casino and later, in the wee hours of the morning, entering the room.
The suspect escaped to Chile, where he was arrested four days after the event.
Court in Lima with all the evidence against him -for example, He still kept clothes with the blood of Flores when he was arrested – he first claimed his innocence and then confessed his guilt.
image source, Getty Images
Van der Sloot arrived in Lima escorted by agents after his arrest in Chile.
He alleged in a written confession that, upon returning to the room in the morning to go out and buy breakfast, he caught her using her laptop without permission to look up information about her background, for which he killed her in a fit of rage.
Convicted in Peru
After various delays in the case, in 2012 the Peruvian court sentenced him to 28 years in prison, with release scheduled for June 10, 2038.
Already in prison, Van der Sloot married a Peruvian woman named Leidy Figueroa in 2014 and they both had a daughter.
The couple was also the focus of controversy over accusations of alleged money laundering through online casinos in complicity with third parties.
Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, has not stopped looking for answers about her daughter’s disappearance in recent years, and believes that Van der Sloot’s extradition may bring her a little closer to the truth.
“I was lucky to have had Natalee in my life for 18 years and since this month I’ve been without her for exactly 18. Now ella I would be 36 years old. It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many will pay off. Together, we are finally doing justice for Natalee,” he said in a statement following the extradition order.
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