This Friday concludes the second week of the trial against Daniel Sancho. The chef, tried for murdering and dismembering the surgeon on August 2 Edwin Arrietahas declared throughout six sessions that have developed favorably for him, since the statements of the last witnesses reinforce one of the crimes of which he does not plead guilty: the premeditation of the murder of the Colombian.
The first two lawyers who represented the son of Rodolfo Sancho y Silvia Bronchalo in Thailand and three interpreters who assisted him in his statements testify this Friday in the provincial court of Koh Samui. They are five important witnesses, since they will help determine to what extent the young man was aware of what he declared to the authorities on August 6. “The accused testified before the Police on two occasions with two different lawyers. Today it is about asking them and the interpreters if Sancho fully understood what he was declaring,” said the current representative of the accused, Apirchat Srinual. The chef has denounced at all times the difficulties he has had in defending his position due to not having sufficient tools to communicate.
He relies on his translator
However, since this week, Sancho has the services of a translator who translates into English the interventions of those present at the trial, which takes place behind closed doors. The interpreter already intervened last week, but she did it by video call. “There’s no way, how helpless. This girl doesn’t translate, we’re listening to ‘Thai’ for twenty minutes and she says three words”, lamented a few days ago, an assessment that the criminal lawyer shared: “The translation is horrible.” The accused asked the judge to change his official translator to his trusted one.
In Srinual’s words, the young man now feels “less frustrated.” Furthermore, he continues to ask questions of witnesses, a quirk allowed by the Thai judicial system. According to his lawyer, Sancho raises questions with “a lot of intelligence.” The trial is expected to end on May 3, the day on which it will be known whether Sancho faces the maximum sentence. In addition, If the course of the trial continues as before, the lawyers contemplate an optimistic scenario for their client.
From his knife to Arrieta’s autopsy
The testimony of the witnesses from the session held this Thursday was key to this. Two forensic police officers and agents from the Koh Phangan police station where the accused went to report the surgeon’s disappearance, as well as specialists in biological analysis, provided illuminating information about the knife that the cook used to kill the surgeon, determining that, although It contained the young man’s DNA, This utensil was not on the shopping list that included the pieces he purchased at a hardware store and that, supposedly, he would have bought to murder the Colombian in a premeditated manner. On the other hand, another point in favor of Sancho’s defense is that so far it has been shown that The autopsy has not been able to determine the specific cause of Edwin Arrieta’s death.
Rodolfo Sancho, optimistic
For the moment, the lawyers of Edwin Arrieta’s family in Thailand have presented this Friday a request for compensation of 30 million bats (about 760,000 euros) as economic damage that Arrieta’s death has caused to his parents, who depended on him. . There are two weeks left to find out the chef’s future, although the attitude of his father also suggests a favorable destiny for him. “It went very well, you’ll know why”, responded to the press at the conclusion of the fifth judicial hearing. It should be said that when the accused went to the Koh Phangan police station to report the disappearance of his friend, the Thai police promised him that if he confessed to being the author of the death he would be deported immediately. An extrajudicial promise that can never come from the Police.
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