The Dutch man who was among the last to see Natalee Holloway before she vanished was injured in a prison brawl as he awaits extradition to the United States, his Peruvian lawyer said Tuesday.
Joran van der Sloot found himself in the middle of a fight between rival gangs Saturday inside Challapalca Prison, where he’s serving a 28-year murder sentence, defense attorney Maximo Altez told NBC News.
While van der Sloot is being treated in the facility’s medical wing, Altez said, his client’s injuries are “nothing too serious.”
The attorney said he’s instructed his client to oppose extradition to the United States, “but he decided against it” and seeks to come to America to fight charges related to the Holloway case.
Van der Sloot’s case in Alabama dates back to 2010 when he was charged with two federal counts of extortion and wire fraud.
Prosecutors claim he was sent thousands of dollars by Holloway’s family on false promises that he’d reveal the location of the missing woman’s remains and other details of her death.
While there’s been no date set yet for van der Sloot’s travel to Alabama, Altez said only a few bureaucratic issues remain, such as his client passing a physical exam and for government officials to make travel arrangements.
“The only thing left to resolve are administrative issues,” Altez said in Spanish.
Representatives for federal prosecutors in Alabama and his U.S. defense lawyers could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday.
In the early morning hours of May 30, 2005, Holloway and others in her traveling party left a nightclub in Aruba, witnesses said.
Her friends went back to their hotel, but Holloway, then 18, got into a gray or silver Honda with three young men — van der Sloot, then 17, and Surinamese brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, local police have said.
Holloway hasn’t been seen since and has been declared legally dead.
Although he’s never been prosecuted in Holloway’s death, van der Sloot has long been on the radar of law enforcement and the Alabama woman’s family.
In early 2012, he pleaded guilty to killing business student Stephany Flores, 21, in his hotel room in Lima, Peru, on May 30, 2010. He reportedly attacked Flores after she looked at his laptop computer and determined he was connected to Holloway’s disappearance.
