The main suspect in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. student Natalee Holloway is expected to be handed over to U.S. officials in Peru and flown to the United States on Thursday, roughly a month after both countries agreed on his extradition.
Joran van der Sloot is wanted in the U.S. on one count each of extortion and wire fraud, the only charges to have ever linked the Dutch citizen to Holloway’s disappearance on the Caribbean island of Aruba.
His extradition moved forward after a Peruvian judge on Tuesday affirmed the government’s decision to temporarily transfer custody to U.S. authorities.
Van der Sloot has been serving a 28-year sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman. Authorities over the weekend moved him from a maximum-security prison in the Andes to a detention facility in the capital, Lima, from which he was due to be taken to the airport at some point Thursday.
It was not immediately clear when he would make his first court appearance in the U.S.
Holloway, who lived in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, was 18 when she vanished during a trip with classmates to Aruba. 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.
Holloway’s mysterious disappearance sparked years of news coverage and countless true-crime podcasts.
Van der Sloot in 2012 pleaded guilty in Peru to murdering 21-year-old Stephany Flores, a business student from a prominent Peruvian family. She was killed in 2010 five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.
A 2001 treaty between Peru and the U.S. allows a suspect to be temporarily extradited to face trial in the other country. Van der Sloot’s attorney, Máximo Altez, initially indicated his client would not challenge his extradition but that changed Monday when he filed a writ of habeas corpus. A judge ruled against van der Sloot the following day.
The time that van der Sloot ends up spending in the U.S. “will be extended until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings,” including the appeal process should there be one, according to a resolution published in Peru’s federal register. The resolution also states that U.S. authorities agreed to return van der Sloot to the custody of Peru afterward.
