Peruvian news is reporting (translation here, another article here , with translation here) that a judge in Peru has extended the detention of Joran Van der Sloot for 7 days. Under Peruvian law, he was to be presented to a judge within 24 hours of being expelled from Chile.

This afternoon, at the request of Ninfa Espinoza Sotomayor, head of Criminal Prosecution in Lima, police took Joran to the office of the Public Ministry and then back to the police headquarters at Dirincri.

Here are the images from the hotel security camera. (Another video of images with times is here.) Here is the Peru Constitution .

Joran Van der Sloot has arrived in Lima where he was taken to the Criminal Investigation Department (Dirincri) of the National Police on Spain Avenue. A press conference was held and he was perp-walked for the media. You can watch a video here. (Update: Here's a better one, they start the perp walk at 3 minutes in.)

Peruvian Minister Octavio Salazar declined to give details of the investigation. Nor did they answer questions asked by journalists. Apparently, he will now be interrogated.

He faces up to three days in the dungeons of the Dirincri and then [he will] be made available to the Peruvian justice. The judge will decide which prison the Dutchman [goes to.]

[More...]

Update 6/7: He is still at the police headquarters facility. Reports that he will be moved to Miguel Castro Castro are now contradicted by the ex-prison chief, who says it is not secure enough to protect him. The ex-chief now thinks he will go to the maximum prison at Piedras Gordas, which he says does have adequate security. More here. This does seem to be his opinion, not fact. He's the former prison head. Article from Peru here.

Update 6/6: Joran Van der Sloot is being moved to the Miguel Castro Castro maximum security prison. Details here.

Getting details on the Peruvian penal code and procedural rules when you can't read Spanish is no easy task. Even Lexis and Westlaw offered little help. Our State Department has some basic information in this report dated March, 2010:

Trial Procedures

The justice system is based on the Napoleonic Code. The prosecutor investigates cases and submits an opinion to a first instance judge, who determines if sufficient evidence exists to open legal proceedings. The judge conducts an investigation, evaluates facts, determines guilt or innocence, and issues a sentence. All defendants are presumed innocent; they have the right to be present at trial, to call witnesses, and to be represented by counsel, although in practice the public defender system often failed to provide indigent defendants with qualified attorneys. The Ministry of Justice provided indigent persons with access to an attorney at no cost, although these attorneys were often poorly trained.

[More...]

The FBI set up Joran Van der Sloot to extort money from a representative of Beth Holloway in Aruba.

So it seems it wasn't Joran's idea to call Beth Holloway and offer details for cash, it was her and the FBI's idea. They probably hoped that if arrested on the extortion charge, they'd be able to get him to Alabama and the FBI could question him about Natalie's murder. Also likely in on the plot: the lawyer for Mrs. Holloway, John Q. Kelly, who was seen in Aruba that week. Question: Did the money wired to Joran belong to the F.B.I.?

So Joran took the bait and got a down payment, and gave or intended to give false information, just like he has before. Why would he do that? Maybe because he has no real information since he didn't kill Natalee Holloway or dispose of her body? Of course, no one wants to believe that. That requires the presumption of innocence, and only guilt sells in the American media.

[More...]

Joran Van der Sloot, expelled from Chile, is en route to Peru where officials want to question him about the murder of Stephany Flores.

It will be a long day -- he left Chile at 8:55 a.m. (handcuffed this time) with three detectives in a plane.

The plane will undertake the five hour plus journey to the border, stopping in San Padro de Atacama to refuel, before touching down in Arica, in the north of Chile. The suspect will then be taken over the border to Peru by land and handed over to Peruvian authorities.

On their side, Peruvian police have begun arrangements to receive the suspect at Santa Rosa, Tacna, the southernmost city in Peru. From Tacna, van der Sloot will be transported by air to the the Peruvian capital, Lima.

To avoid the delays an extradition process can take, Chile agreed to expel Joran as being "an undesirable" or illegally in the country, which allows them to return him to the country from which he crossed into Chile, which is Peru. [More...]

Update: Wire service reporting Joran Van der Sloot will be extradited to Peru tomorrow. Sounds like either he agreed to it or he's not being extradited, but expelled. I'm getting more and more convinced he didn't kill anyone and the authorities know it.

Joran Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile today and is in custody awaiting a decision from Peru on how it wants to proceed.

Van der Sloot was also charged in federal court in the Northern District of Alabama with extortion and wire fraud. The amended complaint is here. He's accused of trying to sell information about the whereabouts of Natalee Holloway's body and how she died.

Authorities in Peru say he and Stephany Flores were seen going to his hotel room about 5:00 a.m. Sunday, and Joran was seen leaving the hotel alone four hours later. Flores' body wasn't found until Wednesday. There's no mention of whether he was bloody or disheveled when seen leaving the hotel, but the cab driver who took him to Chile doesn't mention his appearance being out of the ordinary.

In Lima, police Gen. Cesar Guardia said Flores, who had been seen with the suspect early Sunday, was found Wednesday lying face down on the floor of van der Sloot's hotel room. Her neck was broken, and she was fully clothed, with no signs of having been sexually abused, Guardia told The Associated Press. Authorities found no potential murder weapons in the room, Garcia said.

[More...]

This is just too bizarre. Joran Van Der Sloot is being sought for the murder of a young Peruvian woman this past weekend. The bloody murder occurred in a Lima hotel room rented by him.

Officials believe Flores was killed exactly five years after Holloway's May 30, 2005, disappearance. Flores was found beaten and stabbed to death in a room booked in van der Sloot's name, police said. A hotel employee told police that Flores entered the hotel early Sunday morning with van der Sloot.

....Flores left a friend's home Wednesday morning and was last seen that evening leaving a casino with Van der Sloot, according local media quoting to the woman's father, Ricardo Flores, a Peruvian businessman and racecar driver. Surveillance cameras caught the pair leaving the casino together.

Van der Sloot arrived in Peru on May 14 for a poker tournament. Authorities believe he fled Peru after the murder, crossed into Chile and is en route to Argentina.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today the Department of Justice is opening both civil and criminal probes into the Gulf Oil Spill.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in New Orleans that he planned to “prosecute to the fullest extent of the law” any person or entity that the Justice Department determines has broken the law in connection with the oil spill.

His announcement caused energy stocks to tumble. And
"BP lost 15 percent of its market value during the day’s trading. "

What crimes are being investigated? [More...]

This is one of the silliest studies I've read about in a long time. In the UK, a study was done of meth-using snails. The findings:

They discovered that the drug enhanced the creatures' abilities to learn and remember a task. This gives insight into how some addictive drugs produce memories that are hard to forget, and that can even cause addicts to relapse.

"These drugs of abuse produce very persistent memories," explained Dr Sorg. "It's a learning process - drug addiction is learning unwittingly. ...So addicts might be able to kick their habit in a treatment centre, but when they return to their old haunts, all those cues trigger craving and relapse."

If the meth high produces a memory, so would the meth crash, which is a very powerful and miserable experience. Who would seek to replicate that memory? And if they are suggesting that meth users only recall good memories while being able to forget the bad ones, I'm not buying it.

This was a Pavlovian experiment tinkering with the snail's physical ability to breathe. The snail wasn't trying to feel good, he was trying to stay alive. What bunk.

Former NYC police commissioner Bernard Kerik will self-surrender to a federal prison tomorrow to begin serving a 48 month sentence for crimes related to under-reporting the value of renovations on a personal residence and making false statements on his Homeland Security application.

Bernie has just posted a "farewell" and "thanks" post, It's Time to Move Forward, on his blog. He's prepared to accept his fate, but points out in detail, it's not a fair one.

For nearly three years, I prepared to go to trial to defend myself against substantially the same charges I had already faced in New York State Court. Then, just days before the federal trial was to begin, my bail was revoked and I was imprisoned. The judge threatened to disqualify my legal team, which both he and the government prosecutors had already done twice before and would have sent me back to square one for the third time with my savings now exhausted.

[More...]

At a hearing in Los Angeles yesterday, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza denied Roman Polanski's motion to unseal the testimony of the original case prosecutor so it could be reviewed by the Swiss in deciding whether prosecutors made false allegations in the extradition request.

Polanski's attorneys argue that the issue is important, in part, because the United States' extradition treaty with Switzerland allows the extradition of a defendant only if the remaining time still to be served is more than six months. They note that an affidavit by L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. David Walgren that was given to Swiss authorities does not say Polanski's diagnostic testing was meant to serve as his full prison term.

"This affidavit does not provide the facts, and Mr. Gunson's testimony proves that," attorney Chad S. Hummel said in court Monday.

LA prosecutors argued the extradition request was accurate, citing the fact that it was reviewed by the Department of Justice. When did federal prosecutors become judges? Their view is one that can be taken into account, but it should be the Judge's call.

Prosecutors say Polanski faces up to two years when sentenced. They are arguing about the difference between 48 days (the maximum number of days between the 42 Polanski served and the 90 the judge said he intended to impose) and two years, in a case over 30 years old where the defendant is 76 years old and has been exiled from the U.S. for decades and forced to live under house arrest in Switzerland for months. Give it up already. What are these proceedings, which the victim opposes, costing cash-strapped California? Enough is enough. Free Roman.

Police have arrested a Pakistani Man in connection with the Times Square Failed Car bomb. Shahzad Faisal, of Connecticut, was arrested in Long Island within the last hour.

The last registered owner of the Nissan Pathfinder told authorities he recently sold the car on Craigslist for $1,300 in cash to a “Middle Eastern” or “Hispanic” looking man, CBS News reported. The buyer reportedly paid in cash, with $100 bills.

So, no paper, they were strangers, buying and selling a car on Craig's list. How did the cops find out he was Pakistani? Did they get the IP addresses of the messages from Craig's list?