Thai court to sentence Spanish actor's son accused of murder

A Thai court will sentence Thursday a famed Spanish actor's son charged with murdering and dismembering a Colombian plastic surgeon he met online.

The case against Daniel Sancho Bronchalo, a 30-year-old chef and son of actor Rodolfo Sancho, has generated enormous interest in his home country, with scores of Spanish reporters flying in for the trial.

He is accused of murdering and dismembering Edwin Arrieta Arteaga on the tourist island of Koh Pha Ngan last year.

His trial on charges of premeditated murder, hiding a body and destroying documents was held in April on nearby Koh Samui, another tourist hotspot known for its turquoise waters and rave parties.

Sancho denies premeditated murder, but remains in detention after admitting he killed Arrieta, 44, in what he says was self-defence.

He has also admitted hiding the body, but denies destroying the Colombian's passport.

The two had agreed to meet up after getting to know each other online.

The trial heard that Sancho had placed parts of Arrieta's body in plastic bags and distributed them around Koh Pha Ngan.

Though his crimes are punishable by the death penalty, Arrieta's family has said they would prefer life in prison.

"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."

- 'An accident' -

Sancho's father said in the same documentary that Arrieta had threatened his son, after which "there was a fight, and in this fight there was an accident".

The defence maintains 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.

According to the paper, Sancho said he didn't immediately inform the police of Arrieta's death because he was in shock, and because it was all "an accident".

But 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".

"He continues to deny responsibility for what he did," he said.

The Thai police, he added, "have done a commendable job" reconstructing the crime and finding evidence.

"When Sancho went to report the disappearance of Edwin Arrieta looking for an alibi, they already knew the author of the crime was him," he said.

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.

"This is indisputable," he added.

He said Sancho acknowledged at trial that Arrieta went into convulsions after he hit him.

"In his statement he admitted that afterwards, he finished him off. That is to say, he murdered him," he added.

However, a lawyer for Sancho's family, Carmen Balfagon, told the Spanish news programme Cronica that they were "very optimistic, because in the trial we demonstrated that there was no premeditation".