Daniel Sancho remains in pretrial detention in the Thai prison on Koh Samui awaiting trial after pleading guilty to the murder and dismemberment of Edwin Arrieta. There he has remained for ten days in isolation due to the Covid-19 protocol and has been able to receive a visit from his lawyers and his mother, Silvia Bronchalo, although he has not yet been able to be included among the normal prisoners due to the risk of self harm.
But the Koh Samui prison will not be his final destination and in the coming months he will head to Bangkok to be interned in the Bang Kwang prison., the maximum security prison in which he would serve his sentence if the judge so decrees. “They are waiting for what the Koh Samui judge says. When the judgment is final will move to Bangkok, sure it’s before the end of the year”, assured Khun Panikorn, a Thai prosecutor, to Public mirror. There, there will be no kind of favorable treatment with Sancho: “Everyone, regardless of their nationality and origin, has the same protection inside jail.”
A dangerous place with a “very bad reputation”
The prison to which Daniel Sancho will be transferred is sarcastically known as “the Bangkok Hilton”, because “its comforts are far from those of a five-star hotel”. This is stated by Adrián Foncillas, Antena 3 correspondent in Thailand, who adds that it is the place where some of the the most dangerous criminals with convictions for very serious crimes, such as traffickers, rapists and murderers. There is also Artur Segarra, the Spaniard who murdered David Bernat and who was sentenced to death before sending a letter to the King of Thailand and receiving the commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment.
“I would swear that prison was opened about 70 years ago and has always had a very bad reputation. The prisoners are overcrowded, sometimes there are dozens or even hundreds of them in a single cell. Until 2013 they wore shackles, not so they wouldn’t move, but so they wouldn’t run or kick. The food is scarce and of poor quality. It is not a good place to spend a long season”, added Foncillas.
Of course, the correspondent wanted to insist that Thailand is not an underdeveloped country as some media would have you believe. “I think that in Spain an extreme account of Thailand is being given these days. It is true that it is a country with difficulties and that they are having problems to solidify democracy, but this is not a third world country, not a banana republic”.
