Gema Peñalosa Madrid

Madrid

Updated Wednesday, April 3, 2024-02:35

  • Thailand Boxing, reading and 50 prisoners in the cell: Daniel Sancho's life in Thai prison: "He hadn't read for years"

  • Crime Daniel Sancho, before his trial: "I am convinced that they are going to acquit me"

Daniel Sancho will sit on the bench next April 9, eight months after the crime of

Edwin Arrieta

and he will do so with one maxim: to try to convince the judge that his friend's death was accidental and not premeditated, as as maintained by the Prosecutor's Office and the Thai Police. The hearing will take place until May 3 at the provincial court on the island of Samui - where the young man has been imprisoned since August 7 - and will have at least 57 witnesses for the accusations and the defense: 28 from the Public Prosecutor's Office, 27 from the defense and one from Arrieta's family. It will be a long and complex trial. Sancho has a lot at stake, since he faces the death penalty or, failing that, life imprisonment.

However, Sancho trusts in acquittal, a third possibility that he himself included on the board. In a recent interview given to the Efe agency, the young man hoped for acquittal because he claims that he was the victim of an attempted sexual assault by Edwin Arrieta and that as a result of that a fight began between the two that ended with the death of the surgeon. "I am convinced that they are going to acquit me because it will be proven that it was self-defense," he said in prison on the Thai island of Samui, when asked about how he faces the possibility of a conviction for murder in a country that contemplates capital punishment for blood crimes.

As he explained, he feels "want to face it", to "finally" be heard and to "be able to clarify the distortions, misunderstandings and all the lies that have been told." In addition to the charge of premeditated murder, to which he has pleaded not guilty, Sancho is accused of hiding the body after dismembering it, a crime that he has admitted and that could lead to up to a year in prison. At the beginning of the hearing, the first to testify will be the witnesses of the Prosecutor's Office, who will give way to those summoned by Sancho's lawyer, the public defender

Aprichat Srinuel

. Once this process is finished on May 3, the parties will be able to make a final argument and a new date will be set to read the sentence.

At this time, the team collaborating with Daniel Sancho's defense - made up of lawyer and criminologist

Carmen Balfagón

, criminologist

Ramón Chippirrás

and

Marcos García-Montes

- have reported "irregularities" that they have detected in the Thai Police investigation. This suspicion was always present for the legal representatives of

Rodolfo Sancho

, Daniel's father. They maintain that the investigators deceived Daniel and that, among other things, the young man testified in the first moments without a lawyer. Specifically, they warned that the police made Daniel believe that if he confessed he would return to Spain "within 48 hours."

"False documents"

In addition, they revealed that they deceived him with the figure of the lawyer. They introduced him as a lawyer to a man who, in reality, was a police officer. Balfagón assured that they gave him "false documents" to sign. This is why the defense understands that there are turning points throughout the police investigation that could turn around the situation of Daniel Sancho, who assured the judge at the hearing that the crime occurred accidentally, after a fight between both. Likewise, he pleaded not guilty to destruction of other people's documentation, in reference to the disappearance of Edwin Arrieta's passport.

The two men had met the previous year through Instagram thanks to their interest in gastronomy and, after several meetings in different places around the world, they traveled separately to Phangan, with the intention of meeting on this Thai island. And it is from that meeting where the versions separate: that of Daniel, who says that in the fight, Arrieta fell and suffered a fatal blow to the head, and that of the Police, which maintains that the young man planned to kill him. . Rodolfo Sancho's representatives in Spain have already placed in the hands of the defense lawyer in Thailand a report that analyzes all the items that the young man bought the day before the crime and on which the Police relied to establish their hypothesis of murder. premeditation.

The document carries out an analysis of the conclusions conveyed by the Thai agents in the press conference after the crime, detailing each of the elements presented by the Police as "occasional elements" that Daniel Sancho purchased in his capacity as chef and follower of the thai cuisine For this reason, his professional title has a prominent place in the dossier, since the bulk of the conclusions revolve around it.

The young man confessed that he killed the Colombian surgeon during a fight on August 3 and that he then dismembered him because, according to him, he was afraid of his alleged threats. Since his arrest, Sancho has always maintained that Arrieta had him subjected to pressure and threats such as, for example, making public intimate images of the young man or harming members of his family.