From the news wires

Joran van der Sloot indicted in US for extortion

Joran van der Sloot has been indicted on charges he tried to extort $250,000 from Beth Holloway in exchange for information about daughter Natalee Holloway.

NEWSCOM

Handout photo released by Peruvian America Television, channel 4, of Joran van der Sloot, holding an inmate number at the prosecutor’s office in Lima, moments before he was transferred to the Miguel Castro Castro prison in the outskirts of the city. Van der Sloot was charged with the murder of Peruvian Stephany Flores, 21.

By AP

June 30, 2010, 10:20 p.m. ET | Birmingham, Alabama

Joran van der Sloot has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges he tried to extort $250,000 from the mother of a teenager who disappeared during a trip to Aruba.

U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said van der Sloot was indicted Wednesday in Birmingham on charges of wire fraud and extortion for soliciting money from Beth Holloway in exchange for information on where her daughter, Natalee Holloway, was buried.

Van der Sloot has been a suspect since Natalee Holloway, 18 at the time, disappeared while on a graduation trip to Aruba in 2005.

Van der Sloot is in prison in Peru, charged with murder in the May 30 death of a 21-year-old Lima student he met while playing poker in a casino.

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