Report: Joran van der Sloot to marry in prison Friday

Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch citizen who was the main suspect in the disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway, is set to marry his pregnant girlfriend in the Peruvian prison where he's serving time for the murder of a Peruvian student, reports Reuters.

Van der Sloot, 26, will exchange vows with Peruvian Leidy Figueroa, 24, in a small ceremony at midday, his lawyer Maximo Altez tells the news agency. Van der Sloot is serving a 28-year sentence in the 2010 murder of Peruvian business student Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel after the two met at a casino poker table. He was never charged in connection with the disappearance of Holloway, 18, who vanished while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005.

Van der Sloot's bride-to-be spoke with Crimesider in May and offered details about the nuptials, set to take place in Lima's Piedras Gordas maximum security penitentiary. Leidy Figueroa said the witnesses will be van der Sloot's Peruvian lawyer, Altez, and Figueroa's godmother. Van der Sloot had Altez get the wedding ring - which has a small stone, not a diamond - last year, she said.

Figueroa told Crimesider that she met van der Sloot in July 2010 when she went with a cousin to visit another inmate. She usually visits the convict at the prison twice a week and always brings him home-cooked meals, she said.

Van der Sloot's family in Aruba will not be attending the wedding, but his mother met Figueroa in earlier visits to Peru, she said. Figueroa said she expects to give birth to the couple's child in September.

Conjugal visits are granted to prisoners at Piedras Gordas, an official told Reuters.

According to the bride-to-be, van der Sloot has transformed himself "into a new person" and is enjoying his prison arts and crafts classes.

When Van de Sloot is released from prison in Peru he will be extradited to the United States where he faces federal extortion charges in Alabama in connection to the Natalee Holloway case.

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