Joran van der Sloot is serving 28 years. For murdering a 21-year-old Peruvian woman five years after Ms Holloway was last seen.
Before his pending extradition to the United States, the primary suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway has been transferred to a penitentiary near the capital of Peru.
Dutchman Joran van der Sloot is spending 28 years for murdering a 21-year-old Peruvian woman.
In May, the Peruvian government approved Van der Sloot’s extradition to the United States to face allegations of extortion and wire fraud related to the Holloway case.
Ms. Holloway, 18, from Birmingham, Alabama, disappeared during a class trip to Aruba.
She was last seen leaving a tavern with international school student Van der Sloot.
Van der Sloot, now 35 years old, was identified as a suspect and detained with two Surinamese brothers weeks later.
The body of Ms. Holloway was never discovered, and no charges were lodged in the case. A judge later ruled that Ms. Holloway had died.
In 2010, he offered to find Natalee’s corpse to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Holloway family.
A grand jury indicted him for wire fraud and extortion in that year.
Van der Sloot’s attorney, Máximo Altez, stated that his client was being transferred from the Challapalca prison in the southern Andes of Peru to the Piedras Gordas prison on the fringes of Lima.
In a statement, Peruvian prison officials said, “In the coming days, the INPE (National Penitentiary Institute) will hand over the condemned man to Interpol Peru to turn him over to FBI authorities in the United States.”
Mr. Altez said Van der Sloot will be sent to the US after a medical exam and other procedures.
According to his estimation, the extradition could occur on Tuesday, but Peruvian authorities have not confirmed this.
Mr. Altez reportedly said his client agreed to extradition since US prisons were better than Peruvian ones.
“He is imprisoned in the worst prison in the world,” said Mr. Altez, referring to the maximum-security Challapalca prison.
“Any prison in the United States is comparable to a five-star hotel by comparison,” he said.
