LIMA, Peru -- 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 authorized his extradition to the United States.
Neither U.S. 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, Ala., 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. 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.
In a statement, the young woman's mother, Beth Holloway, said she was blessed to have Natalee in her life for 18 years.
"She would be 36 years old now. It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many is going to pay off. Together, we are finally getting justice for Natalee," Beth Holloway said.
Holloway's mother is a 1978 graduate of Pine Bluff High School, and a grandmother, Ann Reynolds, lived in Pine Bluff. Her father, Dave Holloway, is a graduate of Westside High School near Jonesboro.
Information for this article was contributed by Kimberly Chandler of The Associated Press.
FILE - A sign of Natalee Holloway, an Alabama high school graduate who disappeared while on a graduation trip to Aruba, is seen on Palm Beach, in front of her hotel in Aruba, Friday, June 10, 2005, as a ribbon in her memory blows in the breeze. The government of Peru on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, issued an executive order allowing the temporary extradition to the United States of Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch, File)