Daniel Sancho missed the first opportunity to apologize on Tuesday. At the expected statement before the court that judges him, in Samui, he answered the questions of the defense without any sign of regret. On Wednesday, he will have to go through more difficulties before the questioning of the prosecutor and the co-accusation, who promises to go “by the jugular”.
During his speech yesterday there were tears, but not his, but the Thai translator’s. Alice, a woman in a pink dress, impressed by the explanation of the events that led Sancho to dismember Colombian plastic surgeon Edwin Arrieta.
The alleged murderer, for his part, alternated moments of composure with others of confusion, according to some witnesses. In any case, Daniel Sancho did not ask for forgiveness, since he does not plead guilty, despite the fact that he mulled something similar to regret for what had happened: it was not his wish for the matter to end this way.
During the explanation, Sancho also confessed the concern he felt that they were following him, after the bleeding, which prompted him to go to the police station the next day, after midnight.
It should be noted that yesterday morning, for the first time, Daniel Sancho was interviewed arriving from prison to court in a police van. He was preceded in using the word by an Immigration police officer and two officers from the police station in Phangan, where the crime was committed in August.
The defendant’s turn came after the stoppage, once it was ruled out that his father, the actor Rodolfo Sancho, would intervene as a witness, since he prefers to stand by his son until the end of the trial.
The trial should end on Friday – or tomorrow – but, in reality, “it could last years”, according to well-informed sources. In fact, the Spanish lawyer of the Arrieta family, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, informs La Vanguardia that, “if justice is not done, we are ready for years of litigation and to present appeals, until reaching the Supreme Court”.
Today, Wednesday, Daniel Sancho will have a more difficult ballot in the face of questions from the prosecution, who will try to exploit his contradictions. It should be remembered that on August 5, 48 hours after being forced to report the disappearance of his surgeon friend, Sancho pleaded guilty to the multiplication of incriminating evidence.
However, a few days later he changed his statement and, during the preliminary hearing in November, he pleaded not guilty to the death of Arrieta, but to his dismemberment of the concealment of the remains.
Sancho’s death, possibly recommended by the Madrid lawyers hired by his father, still causes astonishment in Thailand. One of these buffets, Balfagón
In the televised dock in front, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, pro bono lawyer for the Colombian family, has charged in recent days against the daily consular assistance in the room that receives the confessed butcher. To that effect, he would have written a letter to the Spanish ambassador in Bangkok, Felipe de la Morena, protesting the indirect pressure that would be exerted on the magistrates. Despite this, foreign sources consider it a normal treatment, justified by the risk of being sentenced to the death penalty.
Nothing new under the sky. A European with more than thirty years of residence in Thailand, many as a translator in courts and police stations, comes to speak anonymously about the interior of the Thai judicial system with La Vanguardia. Simon (name changed) hears about the Sancho case and considers it a mistake to retract his confession. “The new judges will not believe anything I say.” Sancho will not go unpunished, he says, because he has damaged the reputation of the country and some islands that live off their international image.
