Court: No rearrest in Aruba disappearance of U.S. teen

(CNN) -- An appeals court in Aruba has ruled that a Dutch college student should not be rearrested in the disappearance of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway.

But the investigation remains open, prosecutor Dop Kruimel told The Associated Press on Friday.

The Court of Appeal announced Thursday "its decision to uphold the refusal by the investigating judge to order pre-trial detention" of Joran van der Sloot.

After a Dutch television program aired video February 3 of van der Sloot talking about the case, an investigative judge said there was enough evidence to reopen the inquiry against the Dutch college student.

But the judge denied a prosecution request that van der Sloot be detained.

Prosecutors appealed that portion of the decision but were turned down in Thursday's ruling.

"The court is of the opinion that there is a lack of sufficient facts and circumstances substantiating serious grounds for the suspicion of the suspect's involvement in the crimes for which he is being held responsible by the prosecution," the appeals court announcement said.

"The evidence has to be very, very strong" for a person to be rearrested, Kruimel told the AP on Friday.

A statement from the prosecutor's office said the courts are generally reluctant to arrest people if they have already been held and released, the AP reported.

Aruban authorities questioned van der Sloot in the Netherlands last week, the prosecutor's office said, several days after the video showed the young man saying he was with Holloway when she died.

During the two-hour interview with Aruban investigators, van der Sloot again denied any role in Holloway's disappearance, the prosecutor's office said in a written statement. See timeline of the case since Holloway disappeared »

Van der Sloot said that he was under the influence of marijuana when he was secretly videotaped saying that he arranged for a friend to dump Holloway's body in the ocean, the statement said.

On the video, van der Sloot also says that he wasn't sure Holloway was dead before a friend disposed of her body.

Patrick van der Eem, a man who feigned friendliness toward van der Sloot, recorded the conversations on hidden cameras installed in the Range Rover he was driving, according to the report on Dutch television.

Holloway, 18, was last seen in the early hours of May 30, 2005, leaving a nightclub in Oranjestad, Aruba, with van der Sloot and two others. She was visiting Aruba with about 100 classmates celebrating their graduation from Mountain Brook High School in suburban Birmingham, Alabama.

Holloway failed to show up for her flight home the following day, and her packed bags were found in her hotel room. E-mail to a friend

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