Accusations that arrest of Dutch suspect was delayed and that the FBI facilitated his flight to Peru
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 June 2010 22.05 BST

The FBI is facing accusations that it inadvertently helped Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch prime suspect in the 2005 murder of an American teenager, fly to Peru where he is alleged to have confessed to killing another woman last week.

According to Associated Press, US authorities delayed arresting Van der Sloot despite the fact that they had already reopened the case of Natalee Holloway, who disappeared from the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba five years ago. The FBI is also accused of having given him $15,000 in a sting operation that was designed to build a murder case against him over Holloway's disappearance.

He is alleged to have killed Stephany Flores at a casino hotel in Lima on 30 May, five years to the day after Holloway disappeared while on a school trip to the Caribbean island. AP said it based its report on two unidentified federal law enforcement officials. There was no immediate response from the Alabama FBI office handling the Holloway case.

US prosecutors have already disclosed that $15,000 was transferred to Van der Sloot's bank account in the Netherlands on 10 May, just four days before he travelled from Colombia to Lima in Peru. It has been suggested that as an inveterate gambler he had his eye on the Latin America Poker Tour tournament, which took place earlier this month with a prize pot of almost $1m.

Six weeks ago the FBI revived its murder investigation into the disappearance of Holloway after Van der Sloot is alleged to have approached a friend of the missing girl's family requesting $250,000 in return for telling them where her body was buried on Aruba.

The FBI set up the sting operation, recording a meeting in which the suspect asked for money from the family's lawyer, according to AP. But the FBI is now under pressure to explain why it delayed arresting Van der Sloot and even went so far as to apparently facilitate his travel to Peru through the $15,000 payment.

Police in Peru announced on Monday that Van der Sloot had confessed to last week's killing of Flores, a business student aged 21, in his hotel room in Lima.

Peruvian paper La Republica reported that Van der Sloot confessed he had hit Flores in a rage after she had searched his computer and found reports linking him to the earlier killing. The paper also reported that police have video footage that shows him entering his hotel room with Flores at 5.20am on the morning of the murder and leaving without her at 8.45am.

Van der Sloot's lawyer in the Netherlands has cast doubt on his confession over the Flores killing. Bert De Rooij told a Dutch newspaper that the suspect had made a phone call to his mother on Monday and told her that the police were trying to force a confession out of him using "barbaric" techniques.