Washington, June 23: His cell is full of rats. His confession was faked. And journalists beating a path to the Peruvian jail where Joran van der Sloot is being held on suspicion of two eerily-similar high-profile murders are now being told that his incarceration is the direct result of an FBI sting operation.
The young Dutchman spoke publicly for the first time since he was arrested and charged with the killing of Stephany Flores, a 21-year-old student from Lima whom he had befriended at the gaming tables of a local casino during a high-stakes poker tournament.
“I have been framed,” he claimed, during a rambling interview with De Telegraaf, Amsterdam’s largest daily newspaper. “What happened exactly, I will explain later.” Asked how he was coping with conditions at the notorious Castro Castro prison in Lima, he added: “I am surviving. It is my own fault I am here.”
–Agencies