CrazyExpat Posted August 17, 2010 Report Share Posted August 17, 2010 August 15, 2010 - Joran van der Sloot has had run-ins with the law in four countries: Peru where he was charged with the brutal murder of young Peruvian woman last May; Aruba where he is suspected of kidnapping a U.S. teen from Aruba; U.S. where he was charged with extortion in the missing U.S. teen’s case; and now in Thailand where he faces criminal charges for sex trafficking. The National Enquirer reported on van der Sloot’s alleged involvement in sex trafficking in Thailand earlier this month. According to CBS News, Peru’s minister of justice has now confirmed that Thai authorities are pursuing criminal charges against van der Sloot for his alleged involvement with sex trafficking. According to the Enquirer some of the girls he allegedly approached have disappeared and have never been found. According to Harold Copus, a former FBI agent who was once hired to investigate the Holloway case by the “Dr. Philâ€show said van der Sloot is believed to have been the middle man. Thai authorities are working to confirm if this is true. Click here to read "Future movie portrays Natalee Holloway as a loose drug addict, provokes bitter feelings". “In the sex slave industry, the middle man would get a fee for getting the girls and moving them around,†said Copus, now head of Copus Security Consultants in Atlanta. AOL News reported that during his own investigation in Aruba, Copus heard rumors that "girls were taken out of Aruba to be used in the sex trade," he said. "There was supposedly a guy from Chicago there, a reputed mobster, who has been quoted as saying that a good [sex slave] is worth a quarter of a million dollars." Copus told AOL News that while there is a possibility that Holloway, if kidnapped, was sold into slavery, he doubts she would still be alive today. "Usually they'll dope the girls up so they have no concept of what they are doing," Copus explained, adding that once the women are deemed no longer useful, they often are killed. "There is another seedy business out there called the snuff trade, where they sell or trade recordings of actual murders," he said. "That's the final exploitation." AOL News further reported that the National Enquirer's report is not the first time van der Sloot's name has come up during investigations into the illegal sex trade industry. Van der Sloot was allegedly secretly videotaped in 2008 by a Dutch journalist, Peter de Vries, inside a Bangkok room with two young Thai women and two men who were posing as Dutch sex trade bosses. Van der Sloot was allegedly telling the women they would be working as models in Holland, but in actuality they would be delivered to the Dutch prostitution market and would make several thousand dollars for each woman he delivered. "He was in the process of recruiting girls for prostitution ... that is what we saw [in the video]," Copus said. "What we didn't see was what was going to happen if the girls didn't want to be a prostitute. There's a lot of concern here as to what his intentions were." Not long after the video aired, van der Sloot appeared on the Fox News program "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren." During the interview, he told Van Susteren he had sold Holloway to a mysterious stranger on a boat for $9,600. "He just handed me a bag, grabbed [Natalee] by the arm and he went to the boat that he had in the water," van der Sloot said. But like other confessions he allegedly has made, van der Sloot later contacted Van Susteren and said the story was a lie Police in Peru said van der Sloot confessed to murdering 21-year-old Stephany Ramirez in his hotel room in Peru last May. He then redacted his statement, but the judge upheld it and his attorney promises an appeal. For the entire article: http://www.examiner.com/international-headlines-in-national/joran-van-der-sloot-faces-more-legal-battles-sex-trafficking-charges-thailand-3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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