Aruba police charge 2 in case of missing teen

? Two men were charged Sunday in connection with the disappearance last week of an Alabama teenager who was visiting the island with classmates to celebrate their high school graduation, Aruba’s attorney general said.

Authorities on the Dutch Caribbean island also requested a special diving team from the FBI because of rough currents in some areas, said Atty. Gen. Caren Janssen.

The arrests came nearly a week after 18-year-old Natalee Holloway disappeared during a five-day trip to Aruba with more than 100 classmates from Mountain Brook High School, near Birmingham, Ala.

The men – ages 28 and 30 – were arrested Sunday morning at two separate homes in the southeastern community of San Nicolas, Janssen said at a news conference in the capital.

Janssen declined to provide specific charges, saying the case will go before a judge within 48 hours to determine whether they can be legally held. She said authorities had not found any of Holloway’s belongings at the suspects’ homes.

Tourists, from left, Adam Wisler, 23, and Jennifer Gilmore, 24, of Cleveland, and Donny Fernandez, 33, and Madi Gower, 23, of Aruba, attend a prayer vigil for Natalee Holloway, 18, an Alabama high school graduate who disappeared while she was on a five-day graduation trip to Aruba. The vigil was Sunday, in the California area of Aruba, a site Holloway visited the night she was reported as missing.

“There is a reasonable suspicion they may be involved,” Janssen said, without providing details.

Authorities impounded three vehicles found at the two homes, and a team of more than a dozen FBI agents will help perform forensic testing on them, police said.

Police spokesman Edwin Comemencia said that authorities had not ruled out the possibility that other people were involved. The two men in custody were not among three others described by police Saturday as “persons of interest.”

Neighbors described the two detained men as security guards who worked at a hotel closed for renovation near where the teen was staying at the Holiday Inn. Deputy Police Chief Gerold Dompig confirmed that the suspects were security guards.

On May 30, the night Holloway was last seen, she attended a beach concert featuring Boyz II Men and Lauryn Hill at Surfside beach in southern Aruba, Tourism Minister Edison Briesen said. About 8,000 people attended the concert, which was part of the third annual Soul Beach Music Festival.

Authorities were overheard on a police frequency Sunday issuing a bulletin to stop a rented white Toyota in connection with the disappearance of the 5-foot-4-inch blonde. Dompig declined to confirm it.

At least 70 people showed up for a prayer vigil Sunday evening at a lighthouse on Aruba’s gusty northwest point, singing a hymn and listening to a brief sermon by the Rev. Larry Waymire, an American who has lived in Aruba for six years.