Joran van der Sloot released from prison in Lima and will be transferred to the United States

(CNN) — Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, has left Ancón 1 prison in Lima and is expected to arrive at the Peruvian Air Force’s Grupo 8 base.

The Dutch national is expected to board an FBI Gulfstream 550 business jet used for overseas custody transfer missions and travel to Alabama.

Van der Sloot will be tried in the United States on racketeering and fraud charges relating to an alleged plot to extort money from Holloway’s family after his disappearance.

The disappearance of Natalee Holloway

Joran van der Sloot was one of the last people to see American Natalee Holloway alive in Aruba in 2005 before she disappeared.

“In May 2005, my 18-year-old daughter Natalee Holloway left Birmingham for Aruba for her graduation trip and was never seen again,” mother Beth Holloway said in a family statement released in early May.

Holloway was last seen in the early morning hours of May 30, 2005, leaving a nightclub in Aruba with van der Sloot and two other men. No one has been charged in his disappearance, CNN previously reported, and his body has never been found.

In 2012, an Alabama judge signed an order declaring Holloway legally dead.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have Natalee in my life for 18 years, and as of this month, I’ve been without her for exactly 18 years,” the statement read. “I would be 36 now. It has been a very long and painful journey, but the persistence of many is paying off. Together, we are finally getting justice for Natalee.”

Van der Sloot, a citizen of the Netherlands, was indicted in the United States on federal racketeering and wire fraud charges. In 2012 he was convicted in Peru of murdering 21-year-old Stephany Flores in her hotel room in Lima and sentenced to 28 years in prison.

With reporting by Joe Sutton, Hande Atay Alam, Travis Caldwell and Ralph Ellis, all of CNN.

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