Today after noon, Thai time, comes the most anticipated moment of the trial of Daniel Sancho. The accused will plead not guilty to the murder of Edwin Arrieta before magistrates, prosecutors and lawyers and must submit to their questions.
The main course will begin as soon as those already mentioned return from lunch to the Samui Court room. However, it is doubtful that the afternoon session will be enough to clarify the many dark points of the crime. Other mysteries will remain veiled, as it is a trial behind closed doors. In fact, the trial should end this Friday, but in reality "it could last several years," according to well-informed sources, if appeals are filed.
This Tuesday morning the statements of defense witnesses resumed, which last Thursday afternoon were interrupted by an air conditioning breakdown, which was corrected over the weekend.
In the morning, three Immigration police officers gave statements. Next it should have been the turn of the accused's father, Rodolfo Sancho, but the change in the agenda has ruled it out. The actor, in fact, has missed part of the matinee session. Not so the mother of the accused, the financial analyst Silvia Bronchalo, always elusive.
Daniel Sancho, 29, is accused of premeditatedly murdering a close friend fifteen years his senior, Colombian plastic surgeon Edwin Arrieta. The crime occurred on August 2 on the neighboring island of Phangan. Although the young Spaniard ended up confessing his responsibility to the Thai police, after incurring several contradictions, weeks later he declared that he had acted in self-defense and that Arrieta had accidentally hit himself.
Sancho's move, possibly recommended by the Madrid lawyers hired by his father, continues to cause astonishment in Thailand. One of these law firms, Balfagón
On the television bench opposite, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, pro bono lawyer for the Colombian family, has attacked in recent days against the daily consular assistance, in the courtroom, to the confessed dismemberer. To this end, he would have written a letter to the Spanish ambassador in Bangkok, Felipe de la Morena, protesting the indirect pressure that would be exerted in this way on the magistrates. However, foreign sources consider it normal treatment, due to the risk of being sentenced to capital punishment.
Nothing new under the sun. A European with more than thirty years of residence in the country, many of which as a translator for foreigners in courts and police stations, agrees to talk about the ins and outs of the Thai judicial system with La Vanguardia, as long as his identity is preserved. .
Simon (name changed) is aware of the Sancho case and considers it a mistake that he retracted his confession. "The judges are not going to believe anything he says. In fact, they rely on material evidence and discard 90% of what witnesses may say, because everyone lies."
That said, Simon - who speaks, reads and writes in Thai - believes that all is not lost for Sancho. "According to the Thai saying, the first one who goes to the judge with money wins." In Simon's opinion, who says he has worked on a multitude of judicial processes and personally knows Big Joke - alias of the super police officer who investigated the Sancho case - Thailand has a corruption problem. "But this problem is even greater in the south" - where the islands of Samui and Phangan are located - "which is as if they had a separate law, to protect the masters even more zealously."
When it is pointed out to him that neither Daniel Sancho nor Edwin Arrieta posed any threat to them, he revolts. Sancho will not go unpunished, he says, because he has damaged the reputation of the country and the islands that live off his international image. Likewise, he considers that Thai society sees it as "a homosexual hate crime", doubly reprehensible. "It disgusts them, but they hide it, because they want to project a tolerant image that also attracts these tourists."
In the end, according to him, "since there is so much money in circulation in Samui, it is needed more than in other places. But in the end it opens all the doors." Quite a contrast for someone who knew Samui "when there were only huts for tourists, for the equivalent of ten or fifteen euros." Given background on the profile of the accused and his family, Simon does not see it as unreasonable that Sancho, regardless of the sentence, could leave the Thai prison "in five or six years."
At the moment, the lawyers do not rule out that it is impossible to leave the case heard for sentencing this Friday, as scheduled. This does not mean that the supplementary session or sessions can take place next week, since it depends on the availability of the agendas of magistrates and prosecutors and the courtroom.
Even in that case, Simon assesses that this has only just begun, even in the hypothesis that there could be a ruling in June. "The Sancho family will most likely appeal it. But they should know that the appeal will be examined by other magistrates - three instead of two - in a higher court, the Provincial Court of Surat Thani. And that these will only admit appeals of order technical, without there being room to present new evidence or witnesses".
Although the Thai Ministry of Justice is pressing - like many Russian defendants - for the decision to accept an appeal to be processed not to take more than two months, the truth, according to Simon, is that it can take between three and six months. Likewise, a new verdict can still be appealed to the Supreme Court and the case can then drag on for years.
Simon, logically, does not know whether or not there was premeditation that night before the full moon. But he is struck by the fact that Daniel Sancho loaded parts of Arrieta's dismembered body into a kayak and disposed of it in the waters of Phangan, with Tao looming on the horizon. "Many people know that it is an area of sharks, for which it is not enough to smell the blood."
