Court hears appeals
in missing girl probe
ARUBA--The Court heard five appeals on Tuesday against decisions of the examining judge in the disappearance of US teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba, with the rulings scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
The appeals include four of the prosecution, of which two are against the release of the Kalpoe bothers. The other two are against lifting restrictions for the only suspect still detained, Joran van der Sloot(17), including admitting his lawyers to interrogation sessions.
Van der Sloot in turn is appealing the decision to prolong his detention. He admits he was left alone with the girl at Fishermen’s Hut by the two brothers before she vanished, but says he left her there when one of the brothers picked him up later, something they both deny doing.
The Kalpoe brothers left court with their lawyers after the brief hearings. Van der Sloot left the courthouse handcuffed, hiding his face from the news media and in the custody of authorities.
David Kock, the lawyer for Satish Kalpoe, said he was confident the younger brother would remain free. “There’s nothing new against my client,” Kock said outside the courthouse. “I’m speculating, but perhaps the prosecution wants to appeal for PR reasons.”
Kock said prosecutors had informed him Monday that they had new evidence in the case that included online chat-room conversations between Deepak Kalpoe and Van der Sloot. But Ruud Offringa, the lawyer for the older brother Deepak, told reporters the chat-room conversations were not new evidence and had been presented to a judge previously.
Meanwhile, Dutch Royal Navy Commander Jack Goense said the three F-16 fighter jets searching for the missing girl above Aruba since last week couldn’t find any indications that her body was still on the island. The three planes made 11 flights above the island, mapped its entire surface and scanned specific areas by order of the Aruban authorities.
According to Goense, no trace of Holloway was found during these flights. “Everything is possible, but our sensors didn’t show anything out of the ordinary.” Holloway has been missing since the end of May.
The F-16s of the Twente airbase are expected to be back in the Netherlands by the end of this week. A KDC-10 refuelled the F-16s on their journey to Curaçao.
In the meantime, this tanker plane is assisting a Belgian F-16 mission to Afghanistan and will not be able to accompany the three F-16s back to the Netherlands. On request of the navy commander, the F-16s are being used to update the topographical maps of the ABC Islands, while waiting for the tanker plane to return.
Separately, a U.S. organisation that has been searching for Holloway for more than three weeks said it planned to halt its efforts and return home Sunday. “We want to feel in our hearts we did everything,” a tearful Tim Miller, director of Texas EquuSearch, said at a news conference.
Members of a volunteer search team from Florida State University’s underwater crime scene investigation department left the island Tuesday.
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