Joran van der Sloot, suspect in Natalee Holloway’s death, will be extradited to the U.S.

Associated Press – Dutchman Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the unsolved disappearance of Alabama student Natalee Holloway will be extradited to the United States. Peru’s government issued an executive order Wednesday allowing the extradition.

The Peruvian Embassy in Washington told The Associated Press the order allows for the temporary extradition of Dutchman Joran van der Sloot to be prosecuted for alleged extortion and wire fraud, charges stemming from the Holloway case.

Holloway’s body was never found, and no charges were filed against Van der Sloot in the case. A judge later declared Holloway dead.

Prosecutors in the U.S. allege Van der Sloot accepted $25,000 in cash from Holloway’s family in exchange for a promise to lead them to her body in early 2010, just before he went to Peru. Holloway was from Mountain Brook, Alabama.

Van der Sloot is serving 28 years in prison in Peru for being convicted of murdering 21-year-old Peruvian student Stephany Flores after meeting her in a Lima casino in 2010.

The slaying occurred five years to the day after Holloway disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, where Van der Sloot lived. She was last seen leaving a bar with him.

“At a time when there is increasingly greater cross-border transit of people, our institutions are keeping up to ensure that criminals are brought to justice,” Edgar Alfredo Rebaza, director of Peru’s Office of International Judicial Cooperation and Extraditions of the National Prosecutor’s Office, said in a statement. “We will continue to collaborate on legal issues with allies such as the United States, and many others with which we have extradition treaties.”

A 2001 treaty between Peru and the U.S. allows a suspect to be temporarily extradited to face trial. It requires that the prisoner “be returned” after judicial proceedings are concluded “against that person, in accordance with conditions to be determined by” both countries.

Van der Sloot pleaded guilty in January 2012 to a murder charge in Flores’ slaying.

Van der Sloot could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. It was not clear if he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. More than a decade ago, he told a Peruvian judge that he would fight efforts to be extradited to the U.S.