18 years after Natalee Holloway’s disappearance, Peru to extradite key suspect to US

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The chief suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway is poised to face charges linked to the young woman's vanishing for the first time after the government of Peru authorised his extradition to the United States.

Neither United States nor Peruvian authorities on Thursday would say when they might transfer custody of Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot.

A day earlier the Peruvian Embassy in Washington announced the decision to extradite him to face trial on extortion and wire fraud charges, each of which carries lengthy sentences.

Van der Sloot is in a maximum-security prison in the Andes serving a 28-year sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman.

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, each of which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

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. They said he killed her with “ferocity” and “cruelty,” beating then strangling her in his hotel room. He pleaded guilty in 2012.

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