CNN —
Joran van der Sloot will be asked Friday to enter a plea in US federal court where he is accused of extorting tens of thousands of dollars from the mother of Natalee Holloway, whose disappearance while on a trip celebrating her high school graduation in 2005 became an international mystery.
Van der Sloot, who was one of the last people seen with the 18-year-old Holloway before she vanished, never to be found, was transferred Thursday from Peru to Birmingham, Alabama, in the company of a team of FBI special agents.
The Dutch national is set to be represented by a federal public defender at his arraignment at 11 a.m. CT (noon ET).
Van der Sloot was indicted in 2010 on federal charges of extortion and wire fraud in connection with a plot to sell information about the whereabouts of Holloway’s remains in exchange for $250,000, according to an indictment filed in the Northern District of Alabama.
The missing teen’s mother, Beth Holloway, wired $15,000 to a bank account van der Sloot held in the Netherlands and through an attorney gave him another $10,000 in person, the indictment states. Once he had the initial $25,000, van der Sloot showed the attorney, John Kelly, where Natalee Holloway’s remains allegedly were hidden, but later admitted by email the information was “worthless,” the indictment states.
Holloway was last seen with van der Sloot and two other men leaving a nightclub on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba 18 years ago. Police in Aruba arrested and released the three men – van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe – multiple times in 2005 and 2007 in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. Attorneys for the men maintained their innocence throughout the investigation.
In December 2007, the Aruban Public Prosecutor’s Office said none of the three would be charged and dropped the cases against them, citing insufficient evidence.
Five years later, a judge in Alabama signed an order that declared Holloway legally dead.
Van der Sloot has been held at a prison in Peru after he was convicted in 2012 of murdering Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room on the fifth anniversary of Holloway’s disappearance. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
At the time of his trial, authorities said van der Sloot had used the money from Holloway’s mother to travel to Peru for a poker tournament, where he met Flores.
Peru initially agreed to extradite van der Sloot to the US to face the two charges only after he serves his murder sentence. But last month, the country changed course and agreed to temporarily transfer him to face the US charges, after which he would be returned to Peru, the country’s judiciary said.
Peru agreed to van der Sloot’s “temporary relocation to the United States, because he is condemned here and he must serve his sentence here,” Justice Minister Daniel Maurate said. “But since the US needs him in order to face trial, and the authorities told us that if he didn’t get there sooner, the case against him could be dropped because the witnesses are elderly.”
On Thursday, van der Sloot took a six-and-a-half-hour flight on an FBI jet in what the bureau calls a foreign transfer of custody operation. Typically, the team comprises two FBI special agent pilots, at least one additional auxiliary crew member, and several agents providing security for the prisoner. In many long-haul flights, a medic also accompanies the team.
Prisoners are watched the entire time and wear restraints.
Van der Sloot was taken in a caravan of black SUVs to a jail in Birmingham, not far from Holloway’s hometown of Mountain Brook.
