ORANJESTAD, Aruba — Aruba’s chief government spokesman said late yesterday that three young men detained in the disappearance of an Alabama teenager could be formally charged as soon as Monday.
Spokesman Reuben Trapenberg did not clarify what charges would be filed against the three.
Earlier, Aruba’s attorney general, Karin Janssen, said the young men had been charged with murder since their arrest three weeks ago.
“The three have been charged with the murder of Natalee Holloway from the beginning” of their arrest 10 days after the young woman went missing May 30, she said in a recorded interview. “At the time, we didn’t want to upset the family talking about murder while they searched.”
The attorney general and other Aruba officials have said for weeks that no one has been charged in the 18-year-old’s disappearance. Miss Janssen said authorities also withheld information about the charges in order not to compromise their investigation. Authorities have said they have no physical evidence suggesting Miss Holloway is dead.
Mr. Trapenberg called the Associated Press after the English-language interview with Miss Janssen.
“This is a question of semantics, a problem since Day One,” Mr. Trapenberg said. “The charging is a formal process that happens later on. It could happen as soon as Monday.”
Return calls to Miss Janssen were not immediately returned.
The three young men had been scheduled to go before a judge Monday to learn whether their detentions would be extended another 60 days. Under Dutch law that governs Aruba, a protectorate of the Netherlands, detainees can be held 116 days before being charged by a judge.
Miss Janssen said 17-year-old Joran van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers who are his friends have been charged since their arrest June 9, 10 days after Miss Holloway disappeared.
All court hearings in the case have been closed to the public.
Police have been criticized for letting more than a week go by without detaining the three young men last seen with Miss Holloway and for waiting 16 days after she went missing before searching Mr. Van der Sloot’s home.
“The stupidest thing to do is run and arrest them because an hour later they will go free and you have nothing,” Miss Janssen said.
Asked whether the young men could have had time to destroy evidence, Miss Janssen acknowledged the possibility but said “it didn’t happen in this case.”
She said the prosecution was centering its case around e-mail and cell phone text messages written between the suspects the night Miss Holloway disappeared. Miss Janssen declined to offer further details about the messages, but said not having a body would make getting a murder conviction “more difficult but not impossible.”
Asked why two of three suspects were transported together, apparently giving them the opportunity to compare or arrange their stories, Mr. Trapenberg said in a separate interview that that was done to secretly monitor what they might tell each other.
“One of the techniques is that after hearing separate stories and getting nowhere, prosecutors will have suspects confront each other,” said Mr. Trapenberg. “The U.S. system might be different, but this technique has worked in the past here.”
Miss Janssen offered a similar explanation.
Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18, and van der Sloot were the last ones seen with Miss Holloway the night she disappeared. Two other persons — Mr. van der Sloot’s father, Paul, a high-ranking island judicial official — were detained and released.
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