Death penalty reduced to life sentence for Catalan businessman in Thailand

The Catalan businessman convicted to death penalty in Thailand accused of having killed an also Catalan engineer in the Asian country will see his sentence reduced to life sentence.

Rama X, the King of Thailand, signed a decree last Friday commuting the death penalty convictions for life sentence for all those eligible to ask for a royal pardoning.

The country's justice ministry has confirmed to Catalan News that this includes the businessman Artur Segarra.

Sources of the ministry explained on Monday that now the prison authorities will have to "update the sentence within 120 days," and will have to submit it to the justice department, which will ultimately give the go-ahead to the change.

The reason for the royal pardoning is the celebration of the monarch's 68^th birthday on July 24, according to the decree published in Thailand's official gazette.

The decision opens the door to Segarra being extradited to Spain, as he has been seeking. The justice ministry said that the businessman will have to serve at least 4 years of his time in prison, and also pay the compensation set to the family of David Bernat, the person killed in 2016.

While Segarra has been behind bars since February 2016 for the crime, he lost his final appeal to avoid the death penalty in November 2019.

In December 2019, he asked for a royal pardon in a letter where he confessed his crime.

Kidnapped before getting killed

The police found that he had kidnapped Bernat on January 19, 2016 and held him in his apartment for seven days until he killed him. Authorities found traces of Bernat's blood in Segarra's flat, as well as footage of the two entering the apartment block, and the victim was not seen leaving it alive. 

The sentence read that Segarra ''committed a premeditated murder with the intention of stealing money from the victim.''

Indeed, the investigation found that Bernat was extorted around €900,000, and strange bank transfers that took place after his death. 

According to Thai police and courts, Segarra killed Bernat, cut up his body, froze it and later threw parts of it into a Bangkok river. 

Segarra fled to Cambodia from Thailand on a motorbike, where he was then recognized by a Spanish couple when having dinner with his partner in a restaurant near the northern border of Cambodia. 

Bernat's family did not know anything initially about Bernat's disappearance, until an English friend of Bernat's called his sister on February 1 because he had not heard anything from the victim, who had been due to arrive in Tehran, Iran, ten days prior.

Bernat's hometown was l'Albi, in the western Garrigues county, while Segarra was born in Terrassa.