Aruba's Attorney General Karin Janssen speaks to the Associated Press in her office in Oranjestad, Aruba, Friday, July 1, 2005, regarding the case of missing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch)
Posted on 07/02/2005 7:18:33 PM PDT by Libloather
Dutch Sending Jets to Find Missing Teen
By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer
11 minutes ago
Aruba's Attorney General Karin Janssen speaks to the Associated Press in her office in Oranjestad, Aruba, Friday, July 1, 2005, regarding the case of missing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch)
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Holland will send three F-16 warplanes rigged with search equipment to find Natalee Holloway, Aruban authorities said Saturday, as U.S. lawmakers increased pressure on the Aruban government to do more to find the Alabama teenager nearly five weeks since she disappeared.
The three planes, equipped with infrared and sonar-scanning capacity, were expected to arrive Sunday afternoon, said Aruban government spokesman Ruben Trapenberg.
Trapenberg said the planes were being sent after Aruban Justice Minister Rudy Croes requested more help from Holland, the Caribbean island's former colonizer.
"Both the justice minister and the prime minister feel that Holland can help us reach a resolution with this," said Trapenberg.
This week both Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, wrote letters to Aruban Prime Minister Nelson Oduber urging the government to do more and let the FBI play a larger role in the investigation.
"With every passing day, I become increasingly concerned that the current investigation has reached a dead end," Shelby wrote in a letter dated July 1. "It's unfathomable that the Aruban government would not take advantage of the full spectrum of resources, personnel and expertise of the FBI."
Seven FBI agents have had an observatory role on the island since a few days after Holloway disappeared on May 30, but have repeatedly said they don't have jurisdiction to direct the searches or investigation.
Trapenberg said calls for an increased FBI presence don't make sense. "It's fine to have the FBI here, but if you send in more agents are you saying the ones here are not any good?" he said.
The teen's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, said the U.S. pressure showed that family members aren't alone in their frustration with the pace of the investigation.
"It has become increasingly difficult to simply wait and see what happens," Holloway Twitty, a 44-year-old speech pathologist, said in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press.
The mother said the family was "graciously pleading" with the FBI and Holland to do more to find her daughter.
"It would be comforting for us if they were more active in this investigation," said Holloway Twitty. "We must demand and expect that Natalee be returned to her country."
Holloway, 18, from Mountain Brook, Ala., disappeared on the last of a five-day graduation trip with 124 classmates.
Island-wide searches — which have included Aruban police, the FBI, Dutch Marines, a rescue group from Texas and thousands of volunteers — have produced nothing.
Three young men have been detained in the disappearance: Dutch teenager Joran van der Sloot and his friends, Surinamese brothers Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satish Kalpoe, 18.
Trapenberg said Friday that the three young men have not been formally charged but could be as soon as Monday. Trapenberg has not said what charges could be filed against the three. They were scheduled to go before a judge Monday to learn if their detentions would be extended another 60 days. Under Dutch law that governs Aruba, a protectorate of the Netherlands, detainees can be held 116 days before being charged by a judge.
Trapenberg said Friday that the three young men have not been formally charged but could be as soon as Monday.
The three were the last ones seen with Holloway the night she disappeared. They were arrested June 9 and on Monday were expected to go before a judge who would decide whether to extend their detention an additional 60 days while prosecutors prepare their case.
Doesn't matter, a shallow grave will show up at night in IR for months.
Thanks, good possibility.
"Searching" for a missing person with supersonic-capable aircraft hardly seems to be an appropriate response, as the craft would be passing over almost too swiftly to make anything like an effective estimate of something "down there" being the missing girl.
The remains COULD possibly wash up on the beach somewhere in northeastern Brazil....
The pull of the tides is both swift and far reaching, and that much organic matter would attract a number of scavenger creatures in the sea.
This is unreal. And getting more unreal every day.
I couldn't read past this sentence because I was laughing too hard.
Among the flight crews, Falcon has never been fully accepted. Viper has been the unofficial nickname for years. (I'm an Air Force brat.)
The F-16s name is indeed the Falcon, but its pilots prefer to call it the Viper. Kind of similar to how the A-10 Thunderbolt is called the Warthog, or how the B52 Stratofortress is called the B-U-F-F.
This was listed as a story on Yahoo. The HUGE unanswered question still remains - just how many F-16s are owned by the Dutch? Six? They must be having some slow 'insurgent' days there...
You are being too kind to these clods. *S*
I wish the State Department would lock down that sordid protectorate from ANY further American tourist trade ufn.
That would really bring some rain !!
That's probably what they're going to be doing, and I suspect the 16's will be cruising around at about 300mph.
IIRC, I think this is actually Holland's best airborne recon system - they're heavily invested in '16's and don't have much by way of rotary-wing assets. I don't know that they have any choppers that can mount a LANTIRN pod or that have FLIR systems of the required sensitivity.
*I* wanna see their infrared system system that can differentiate an ambient-temperature corpse from its ambient-temperature surroundings.
I read about it from an earlier post. It seems pretty cool. I was aware of FLIR, but not LANTIRN.
American pilots?? I thought Vipers flew off the battlestar Gallactica!
Also, unless you steamroller the grave afterwards (and, by the way, that also shows up on IR, just not nearly as long), the soil density is lower in a shallow grave and thus it cools off faster and heats up slower than the surrounding soil - and the difference is visible on IR.
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