Parents back detained son in Aruba case
ORANJESTAD, Aruba – The parents of a Dutch youth held in the disappearance of an Alabama teen said Wednesday they believe he is innocent, adding that they don’t know how to deal with this “big nightmare.”
Paul van der Sloot, a judicial official whose 17-year-old son has been arrested in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, offered his first public statements since Holloway vanished three weeks ago, telling Fox News: “I still believe my son. It’s all very hard.”
Joran van der Sloot and two friends were arrested 10 days after Holloway, 18, went missing on May 30. Police say Joran van der Sloot met Holloway at a casino two days earlier. They say the three young men testified that they took her from a popular restaurant to a beach, where the Dutch boy and Holloway were kissing in the back of the car, then dropped her at the Holiday Inn where she was staying around 2 a.m.
Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, has insisted the three know what happened to her daughter and that police should press them harder to tell the truth. She has asked why the three were initially released after only a couple of hours of questioning, and arrested more than a week later. Anita van der Sloot, the Dutch teen’s mother, said: “Joran should have been interrogated from the beginning. But they let the kids go.”
Anita van der Sloot said when she saw her son in jail this week, “he still didn’t believe it was true. He said ‘Mom, the truth will come forward, and I know that I did not do anything to the girl.’ “
Paul van der Sloot has been barred from seeing his son, the attorney general’s office said, because police fear it could harm the investigation. He was interrogated by police for seven hours over Saturday and Sunday.
Anita van der Sloot said her son has been interrogated for sometimes hours at a time, with authorities “calling him psychopath, murderer.”
George Twitty, Holloway’s stepfather, told Fox that in the initial days after the teen’s disappearance, Paul van der Sloot – and one of two Surinamese brothers arrested with Joren van der Sloot – advised his son not to talk to her family.