Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

Peruvian prison officials strongly denied Monday that Joran van der Sloot, a key suspect in the Natalee Holloway disappearance in Aruba, was stabbed and seriously injured in a maximum security prison in the Andes.

Van der Sloot's Peruvian wife, Leidy Figueroa, and his lawyer, Máximo Altez, told told RTL Boulevard Monday that he was stabbed twice by fellow inmates, leaving "wounds that are definitely 2 inches deep."

Figueroa, told the Dutch-language TV program that her husband, a Dutch national, was stabbed in the shoulder and waist by fellow prisoners. She also said she visited him Sunday in prison and smuggled out a bloody polo shirt as evidence.

Figueroa, 25, also gave Britain's Daily Mail photos of blood-soaked white sheets that she claims were used to cover Van der Sloot's wounds.

"Joran was stabbed many times in the stomach by other inmates, he was almost killed, I am scared for his life," Figueroa, 25, tells MailOnline. "He's losing a lot of blood but isn't receiving any medical attention. He's been very poorly, I have been trying to get the guards to take him to hospital."

Figueroa, who met van der Sloot in prison and married him in July, gave birth to his child, a daughter, in September.

Altez, his attorney, said conditions in Peru's notorious Challapalca prison are poor and fellow prisoners apparently believe it would be closed if van der Sloot, a high-profile foreign prisoner, dies. The stabbing incident was being investigated by a Peruvian prosecutor, his lawyer said.

Van der Sloot was transferred in August to the maximum security prison in the Andes. Prison officials said he was moved from a more relaxed prison outside Lima for threatening the warden after guards confiscated a mobile phone he had in his cell, the BBC reported. Van der Sloot charged that he was given the phone by the warden as a "set up."

Jose Luis Perez Guadalupe, head of the National Penitentiary Institute, denied the allegations Monday, telling the Lima newspaper El Comercio that Figueroa is a "compulsive liar" who has raised false claims in the past.

"Absolutely nothing has happened," he said. "It is not the first time in recent weeks that she has given false information to the press."

The prison official said such tales were inevitable, stemming from Figeruoa's "complex personality."

"In the first

place, no girl in her right mind would go to a maximum security prison and marry its most notorious killer," Perez Guadalupe said.



Van der Sloot is serving a 28-year sentence for killing a Peruvian business student, Stephany Flores, in his hotel room in 2010 after meeting her in a casino.

Investigators suggested that he was angry that the 21-year-old Flores had apparently seen information on his computer about the Holloway case. He also stole her money and credit cards and briefly fled the country.

Van der Sloot has been arrested twice in Aruba, but never charged, in connection with the disappearance of Holloway, who vanished while on a school outing with classmates in May 2005. She was last seen leaving a bar on the island with van der Sloot. Her body was never found.

In 2010, van der Sloot was charged in the United States for allegedly attempting to extort $250,000 from Holloway's mother, Beth.

Contributing: Associated Press

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