Dutch murder suspect Joran van der Sloot is being given preferential treatment in prison in Peru. That’s according to the Reverend Peter Middelkoop, head of the Epafras Foundation, which supports Dutch detainees in foreign prisons throughout the world.

Rev Middelkoop has had a frank talk with Mr Van der Sloot in his prison cell in Lima. The Dutchman is suspected of killing Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel room in May last year. The 23-year-old is also still suspected of involvement in the disappearance of US teenager Natalee Holloway on Aruba in May 2005 although charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence.

“He is a very well-known person, so the Peruvian authorities are doing everything to make sure nothing happens to him. He is securely guarded, so that other prisoners cannot harm him,” Rev Middelkoop has told Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Rapport
The clergyman met Joran van der Sloot last November. He says he was given plenty of time for the meeting. The prisoner spoke about his feelings, but Rev Middelkoop refuses to disclose what was said. “That’s private.”

But he is willing to describe the atmosphere in which the meeting took place: “He didn’t know who I was, so he was a bit distant at first. But, after a while, you feel you have a bit of a rapport and then you try to talk about things that are important to him.”

Most detainees abroad
It’s not just his notoriety that makes Joran van der Sloot different from other Dutch detainees in Latin America. He is also the only one, out of more than 100 Dutch citizens in prison in Peru, who was not arrested for drugs smuggling.

There are around 2,500 Dutch nationals in prisons across the world. Rev Middelkoop says that despite its small population, the Netherlands has more people in prison abroad than most other countries. The reverend and his Protestant, Roman Catholic and Muslim colleagues visit the Dutch prisoners, who often have no one else who cares about them.

Drugs offences
“This group of people often feels they have been forgotten, that nobody cares. We tell them this isn’t true, that we think even those that have been written off by everybody else, shouldn’t be written off. We believe they amount to more than whatever it is they did wrong.” At first, the prisoners don’t know what to think, but later they look forward to visits from the people from Epafras - even if it’s just so that they can speak their own language again.

The Dutch nationals who are in European prisons have been arrested for all manner of offences. But those outside Europe have almost all been convicted of drugs smuggling. They aren’t big-time drugs traffickers. They’re mostly couriers who were caught with small amounts of drugs in their bags or on their bodies, often at airports, attempting to smuggle the drugs back to Europe.

Debts
Frank Miedema and Sabine Stoltz have done research for the justice ministry on Dutch citizens held in prison abroad. They looked into what kind of people they were and why so many Dutch land up in foreign jails.

It turns out that Dutch prisoners are mostly men and that their average age is 41. Most of them have families and not much education, and many of them have debts. Most smuggled drugs without realising how easy it is to get caught or how severe sentences are outside the Netherlands. Many, especially of those held in the Dominican Republic, are of Surinamese or Antillean origin.

Rev Middelkoop adds that many of them were picked up on their first attempt at smuggling. He says they are often people living on state benefits or from irregular work, and that they are seldom drug addicts themselves.

Stupid
Radio Netherlands Worldwide has spoken to a Dutch woman who has just returned from years in jail in Peru. She didn’t want to be named but said: “My boyfriend at the time asked me to go with him. We had debts. I was desperate and the relationship was bad. That’s why I went with him - just a stupid mistake.” She is quick to warn other Dutch girls: “If my story means there’s just one less, then it’s all to the good”.

Distribution point
Why do so many Dutch people decide to smuggle drugs? The Netherlands is certainly no poorer than other countries. Frank Miedema and Sabine Stoltz link it to the “role played by the Netherlands in the international drugs market”. The country is a distribution point for hard drugs and this is possibly why so many Dutch consider smuggling drugs as a way of getting out of debt.

(mw)