While Thailand still has the death penalty for some crimes, including premeditated murder, it rarely carries out executions — the last being in 2018.
AFP
Lillian SUWANRUMPHA/AFP
A Thai court will give its verdict on Thursday in the trial of a famed Spanish actor’s son accused of murdering and dismembering a Colombian plastic surgeon he met online.
Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a 30-year-old chef, is accused of killing Edwin Arrieta Arteaga on the tourist island of Koh Phangan last year and chopping his body up to conceal the crime.
The case has generated enormous interest in Spain because the defendant’s father Rodolfo Sancho is a well-known actor, and scores of Spanish reporters have flown in for the trial.
Sancho denies premeditated murder, but has admitted killing Arrieta, 44, in what he says was self-defence.
He has also admitted hiding the body, but denies destroying the Colombian’s passport.
The trial on the nearby island of Koh Samui heard that Sancho had put parts of Arrieta’s body in plastic bags and distributed them around Koh Phangan.
While Thailand still has the death penalty for some crimes, including premeditated murder, it rarely carries out executions — the last being in 2018.
Arrieta’s family have said they would prefer a sentence of life imprisonment if Sancho is found guilty.
“Let him be left in Thailand so he can take time, all the time that God gives him to live, to think about what he did,” Darling Arrieta, the victim’s sister, said in an HBO documentary about the case.
“He not only dismembered my brother, he dismembered a family.”
Sancho and Arrieta agreed to meet up in person after getting to know each other online.
Sancho’s father said in the same HBO documentary that Arrieta had threatened his son, and then “there was a fight, and in this fight there was an accident”.
The defence argued that Sancho acted in legitimate self-defence after Arrieta tried to force him to have sex.
“He tried to rape me, and we fought,” Sancho said in a statement quoted by the Spanish daily El Mundo.
A lawyer for the victim’s family, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, said in a recent interview with El Mundo that Sancho was living a “false reality”.
Ospina said it was proven at the trial in April that Sancho had bought knives, plastic bags and cleaning supplies ahead of the crime, and kept them in the room where the killing took place.