Dutch Official Arrested in Teen’s Disappearance

Police arrested the father of a young Dutch teen already in custody in connection with the disappearance of a young Alabama woman and said he was considered a suspect in the 3-week-old case.

The teen’s mother, meanwhile, told Associated Press that her son had changed his story, admitting to her that he was alone with 18-year-old Natalee Holloway on a beach the night she vanished, and that he left her there, not at a hotel as he had earlier stated.

But Joran van der Sloot, 17, insisted that he did not hurt her, said his mother, Anita.

Paul van der Sloot, 52, a justice official on this Dutch Caribbean island, was arrested shortly after he and his wife left the San Nicolas prison where Joran is being held, Anita van der Sloot said, adding that her husband was “a man of integrity.”