Prime suspect in Natalee Holloway disappearance Joran van der Sloot touches ... trends now
The main suspect in the disappearance of Alabama student Natalee Holloway has arrived in the US after he was extradited from Peru with help from FBI agents.
Joran van der Sloot is charged over the killing of American student on the Caribbean island of Aruba, and is wanted on one count of extortion and wire fraud.
His extradition flight landed in Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday afternoon - hours after he was seen grinning in a Peruvian police car driven by officers who delivered him to Interpol officials.
The crimes are the only charges to have ever linked the Dutch citizen to Holloway's disappearance in May 2005. While he is not charged with murder, he remains the chief suspect in the case after prosecutors say he promised to extort Holloway's family with information about the whereabouts of her body.
Van der Sloot had been held in a prison in Lima before being placed in US custody. The 35-year-old had been serving a 28-year sentence for the murder of a Peruvian woman in 2010, who was killed exactly five years after Holloway went missing.
Joran van der Sloot smiled before he boarded a plane back to the US. The Dutchman, who is accused of killing Natalee Holloway, landed in the US on Thursday
Natalee disappeared in 2005 and her body has never been found, leading authorities to declare her legally dead in 2012
He landed at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.
Van der Sloot did not appear to have any physical injuries, despite his lawyer claiming earlier this week that he was 'severely beaten' by other inmates at his Peruvian prison.
Authorities moved him from a maximum-security prison in the Andes over the weekend before he was taken to Lima and then the airport this morning.
It is currently unclear when he will make his first appearance in court on U.S. soil.
The accused killer filed a last-ditch attempt to block his extradition to the U.S. two days ago, but a Peruvian judge overruled the filing.
The petition seems to contradict previous statements by his lawyer, Maximo Altez, who had claimed van der Sloot wanted to clear his name and welcomed extradition.
Holloway, who lived in Birmingham, Alabama, was 18 when she vanished during a trip with classmates to Aruba.
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.
Joran van der Sloot is accused of killing Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba, and
