The trial against Daniel Sancho for premeditated murder continues and the details of the case are many. During the first statements of the young man before the Thai Police, in which reconomized up to three times that had ended the life of Edwin Arrieta hitting him against the sink, the son of Rodolfo Sancho He also told some of the trickiest parts of the alleged crime.
In a testimony dated August 16, to which he has had access 20 minutes, when Sancho was already imprisoned and the autopsy of the deceased was in process, the young man reported that he had not stabbed the Colombian doctor before he died, but he acknowledged that, at the time of proceeding to dismember him, things did not go entirely as he wanted . “The knife with which I cut the body was not sharp enough. I got angry and stuck it in his face.“he asserted.
During this interrogation, Sancho also admitted not remembering how many pieces had dismembered Arrieta’s bodydespite the fact that in the statements he gave after being arrested (from August 3 to 7) he made a drawing specifying 17 cuts.
“I don’t remember how many piecesmaybe 17 or 20 packaged in about 8 or nine bags, but I don’t remember what part each one contained,” he said. “At that time I couldn’t control myself. “I was afraid, confused, a lot of emotions… I couldn’t control myself,” he admitted when asked why he no longer remembered the process.
Furthermore, Sancho confirmed at that moment what he had previously stated after the event. “I would like to confirm the original testimony of August 6 to the extent that it is not contrary to it,” the report reads.
Forensics confirm the fight
On the other hand, during this Tuesday’s session it was possible to hear the statement of the forensic doctors who performed the autopsies and the lieutenant police colonel Thai Somsak Noru, who did the interrogations in the first days. The day ended with the first two lawyers who represented Sancho in Thailand and three people who assisted him with translation during police interrogations.
During the session the focus was placed on the damage to Arrieta’s skull, compatible with a fight, as Sancho has related on several occasions. According to sources present at the oral hearing, the forensic experts declared that these damages “are not natural, but the result of a contusion or blow exerted with great violence“. Along those lines, they said that the blows “are compatible with a punch or a rigid object.”
According to the final report of Arrieta’s autopsy, to which this newspaper has had access, the victim’s skull had a torn wound in the right eyebrow; collapsed right eyeball; a torn wound in the nose and the cartilage broken and deformed; bruises on the left eye and tears from the right earlobe to the chin.
The trial, in its final stretch
Sancho will finally declare this Thursday after it was considered that he would do it this Wednesday in the afternoon session of the judicial process (in the morning in Spain). At the end of the trial Tuesday, his Thai lawyer said it would all depend on “whether there is time after the co-accusation witnesses and how a planned power outage affects the court’s operation.”
Regarding the co-accusation, the Arrieta family lawyer Juango Ospina will sit as a witness given the impossibility of the deceased’s parents or sister doing so.
Ospina will be in charge of counting “the aspects of the economic and personal situation in which the family has been left” from the Colombian, as he himself explained this Tuesday. “We are going to confirm ourselves in the economic reports that have been provided to the cause, about the situation of helplessness in which the parents and sister have been left with the loss of Edwin,” he added.
With respect to the economic situation, Ospina has also revealed that the Arrieta family will request compensation of 410,000 eurosalthough Thai lawyers have raised the request to 30 million bats (approximately 760,000 euros).
His statement, which is not expected to last much, will give way to the defense’s turn, which has around 25 witnesses, including Daniel Sancho himself and his father, Rodolfo Sancho.
