Joran's father denies knowledge of 'human trafficking'

Joran's father denies knowledge of 'human trafficking'

RNW News

Paulus van der Sloot, father of the Holloway case suspect Joran, is refusing to respond to allegations that his son told him about what happened to the missing American teenager. In an interview aired in the US on Tuesday, Joran told Fox News TV how he had sold Natalee Holloway to a Venezuelan man on the beach in Aruba for 10,000 dollars.

Paulus van der Sloot talking to Fox News TV, Nov 2008 (Fox News screenshot)

A Fox News reporter managed to show Mr Van der Sloot's father some transcripts of tape recordings of him talking to his son about the Natalee Holloway case. At one point, the transcript shows how his father says to Joran,
"But what you've done is pretty bad. Human trafficking is a serious crime."Fox News TV also aired the audio recording of the telephone conversation between Joran and his father. They spoke in clearly understandable Dutch; the audio was subtitled in English on screen.
Confronted with the possibility that Natalee might still be alive, Paulus van der Sloot went into his office and broke off the outdoor interview.
The reporter says that Mr van der Sloot did not deny that the transcribed conversations actually took place.

Lawyer disagrees
Joe Tacopina, who was Joran van der Sloot's lawyer in the Aruba investigation, says he also spoke to Paulus van der Sloot. To Tacopina, Paulus said he had never had such a conversation with his son, suggesting that the audio recording had been doctored.
Mr Tacopina was accusing Fox News of paying Joran for the recordings and his interview simply to make great tv and increase ratings. The lawyer also said Joran is "despicable" and "on the verge of [being a] sociopath".