By Martin Villena, Carla Salazar and Franklin Briceno ... via Associated Press

LIMA, Peru — Joran van der Sloot knew his guilty plea in the strangulation death of Stephany Flores, a young business student, he met at a Lima casino in 2010 was a big gamble as he tried to get a reduced sentence. On Friday, the poker-loving Dutchman lost.

A three-judge panel sentenced him to 28 years in prison, discarding his claims of contrition in a killing his lawyer said was triggered by trauma from being the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway.

Asked if he accepted the sentence, Van der Sloot, standing in a green T-shirt and faded jeans in a hot Lima courtroom, said he would appeal.

The sentencing marked the latest chapter in the tabloid-sustaining saga and came a day after a judge in Alabama declared Holloway legally dead as her parents try to bring Van der Sloot, 24, to the U.S. for a related crime.

"I believe he is beyond rehabilitation," Dave Holloway in Birmingham, Ala., after that hearing.

The Peruvian judges said Friday that due to time already served, van der Sloot's sentence would end in June 2038.

While the parents of Holloway and Flores want him to experience the greater deprivation of a U.S. prison, they will have to wait for him to serve his time before any extradition on U.S. charges related to his alleged extortion of Holloway's mother, a Peruvian legal expert said.

 Late Friday, prison authorities told the AP that Van der Sloot had been transferred to the high-security Piedras Gordas prison in northern Lima in response to reports that he had enjoyed privileges like television, internet access and a cell phone in Castro Castro prison. Piedras Gordas holds local crime bosses and terrorism convicts, including Shining Path guerrillas.

"He will be in an individual cell at Piedras Gordas to give authorities greater control of him and cut off some of the facilities he has had in Castro Castro," said prison service spokeswoman Janeth Sanchez.

Earlier Friday, the three female judges showed no sign of believing his contrition for the May 2010 killing of Stephany Flores. Their sentence, which took a clerk nearly two hours to read as Van der Sloot repeatedly wiped sweat from his brow, said he was guilty of "first-degree murder with aggravating factors of ferocity and great cruelty."

Van der Sloot stood passively as the clerk detailed how he elbowed Flores, a 21-year-old business student, in the face, beat her repeatedly, then strangled her with his bloodied shirt.

Van der Sloot's expression didn't change when the sentence was rendered, including the judges' order to pay $75,000 in reparations to the victim's family. No members of Van der Sloot's family attended the trial.

It is the first sentence ever imposed on Van der Sloot despite repeated efforts to prove he was involved in Holloway's apparent death on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba where he grew up. She was last seen leaving a nightclub with him.

The Peruvian victim's father, Ricardo Flores, complained after the sentencing that Van der Sloot was living well in a Lima prison, where he has been segregated from the general population.

"A jail isn't a five-star hotel," Ricardo Flores told reporters. "Since the first day, we've been complaining about the excessive privileges" Van der Sloot allegedly enjoyed in jail.

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