Joran van der Sloot, the main suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American teen Natalee Holloway, will be handed over to FBI agents on Thursday.
The superior court in Lima, Peru, ordered the transfer, according to a social media post on Tuesday viewed by CNN.
“With this resolution, the Judge has completed procedures for the transfer (passive extradition) of Joran Van Der Sloot, who will be prosecuted in the United States of America for the alleged crimes of extortion and fraud against Elizabeth Ann Holloway,” the statement reads.
The news comes a day after an attorney for van der Sloot said his client has changed his mind and plans to challenge his extradition to the United States.
Defense attorney Máximo Altéz said van der Sloot reversed course following a meeting with Dutch diplomats.
“He does not want to be extradited to the United States of America,” Altéz said. “He was visited today by his embassy (representatives) who made him see the mistake he was making by being extradited without due process.”
The attorney said van der Sloot was never notified of an open extradition process, and as a result, was not able to challenge it.
Van der Sloot will be extradited to the US in early June to face fraud charges tied to the disappearance of Holloway, who went missing in 2005 during a senior class trip to Aruba.
Holloway, 18, was last seen leaving a bar in the Caribbean nation with van der Sloot, then 17, who was identified as a suspect in her disappearance but never charged.
Van der Sloot arrived Saturday at a corrections facility in Lima after a long ground trip under strict security measures from a prison in the Andes, where he was serving a 28-year sentence for the murder of Stephany Flores, whom he strangled days before the fifth anniversary of Holloway’s disappearance.
Around that time, van der Sloot met with the lawyer for Holloway’s mother in Aruba and claimed his father had buried her under a house — only to retract his story in an alleged plot to get money from her grieving family.
The then-22-year-old offered to share what happened to Holloway with her mother’s lawyer in exchange for $250,000, but the agreement fell apart when the contractor who worked on the home where van der Sloot claimed Holloway was buried said the property was not under construction at the time of her disappearance.
In an email, van der Sloot later admitted he had made up the entire story.
Even with a murder conviction under his belt, van der Sloot continues to receive positive attention from “fans,” his attorney has claimed.
Van der Sloot famously got married and fathered a child while incarcerated — though he is now divorcing his wife for a “prettier and younger” girlfriend, Altez said.
After nearly two decades, no one has been charged in connection to Holloway’s disappearance. She was legally declared dead in 2012.
