Thailand wants Van der Sloot transcript

Monday 10 November 2008

The Thai authorities have asked for a copy of last night’s tv programme in which Joran van der Sloot, the chief suspect in the disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, said he could get Thai girls for the Dutch sex industry, the Telegraaf reports.

A spokesman for tv crime reporter Peter R de Vries, who made the two-hour show using hidden cameras, told the paper that the transcript was now being translated for Thai embassy staff.

Meanwhile, the paper says Van der Sloot left Thailand on Friday, before the broadcast.

His lawyer Bert de Rooij, has been unable to speak to him, the paper says. ‘I am hoping to get in touch with him soon,’ the Telegraaf quoted De Rooij as saying.

De Vries won an Emmy for an earlier undercover programme in which Van der Sloot said a friend had dumped Holloway’s body at sea. The 18-year-old, who was on a school trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba, has been missing since 2005.

Four psychologists interviewed by De Vries in last night’s programme said that, in their opinion, Van der Sloot was telling the truth when he was secretly recorded talking about Holloway.

Body language

‘A crucial moment was his body language when he spoke about how Natalee began to shake,’ said professor of legal psychology Harald Merkelbach. ‘You don’t do act like that if you are making something up.’

In Sunday night’s show, De Vries showed Van der Sloot in Bangkok telling a reporter from the show and another man, both posing as Dutch sex industry entrepreneurs, that he could get Thai girls to work for them in the Netherlands on false documents.

When confronted with these claims on the phone by De Vries at the end of the show, Van der Sloot, dismissed them saying: ‘I have done nothing. You initiated everything.’

A spokesman for the public prosecution service said later on Monday that Van der Sloot did not appear to have commited any crime. 'Criminal offences cannot be established on the basis of a television programme,' the spokesman told the Telegraaf.

For our previous story on the Thai undercover documentary, click here