The defense of the Spanish Daniel Sancho, sentenced to life imprisonment in Thailand for the murder of the Colombian Edwin Arrieta, has until January 17 to present their allegations against the victim’s family’s appealin which call for the death penalty to be imposed.
As confirmed to EFE by sources from Sancho’s defense, the Samui Court has set January 17 as the deadline to respond to the appeal presented on November 29 by the Arrieta family’s lawyers in Thailand, which they also ask to increase the compensation imposed.
Sancho, 30 years old, was convicted on August 29 for premeditated murder and dismemberment of the Colombian surgeon on the Thai island of Koh Phangan a year earlier.
Since then, Sancho’s legal team in Spain – lawyer Marcos García Montes and criminologists Ramón Chippirrás and Carmen Balfagón – have been working together with advisors in Thailand to appeal the sentence, whose presentation has been postponed at the request of the defense. on four occasions.
The last postponement occurred last week, before the deadline of December 29, and the judge has granted one more month, until January 29to present the appeal.
The defense maintains that the evidence and testimony presented at the trial last April supported their version that Arrieta’s death was due to a fight in which Sancho acted in self-defense.
Sancho is in prison since last August 30 in the central prison of Surat Thani (southern Thailand), to which he was transferred from Samui, on the island where the trial was held between April 9 and May 2.
In addition to the appeal to the sentence, the convicted man’s lawyers are working on the brief of allegations against the appeal presented by the lawyers of Arrieta’s family.
According to the letter from the lawyers of Arrieta’s family, to which EFE had access, it is requested that the ruling be reviewed for reasons such as the “conclusiveness” of the police evidence and the convicted person’s lack of repentance.
“The Court of Appeals is requested to review the first instance ruling and declare the accused guilty under Article 289 (4) of the Penal Code, which establishes the death penalty as the only applicable penalty,” the appeal states.
The legal team led by the Spanish-Colombian lawyer Juan Gonzalo Ospina also claimed in its appeal that The compensation to be paid to Arrieta’s family will be increasedwhich the judge set in the sentence at 4 million bats (almost 117,000 dollars or around 112,000 euros).
The Prosecutor’s Office accepted the sentence imposed and communicated its decision not to appeal after reading the sentence.
The Spaniard met the Colombian surgeon through social networks months before they both met on the Thai island of Phangan on August 2, 2023.
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