Two Bangkok bombing suspects cleared

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/20/two-bangkok-bombing-suspects-cleared

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Thai police have cleared two suspects in the Bangkok shrine bombing after one of them turned himself in and said he was a tour guide, and the other was a Chinese tourist.

National police spokesman Lt Gen Prawut Thavornsiri said the two men were “definitely” no longer suspects.

The two men were seen in a security video standing in front of a man dressed in a yellow T-shirt who police have identified as the main suspect, shortly before the bomb exploded on Monday evening.

Three days after the bombing, which killed 20, the motives remain unclear and there has been no claim of responsibility. Authorities appear to have few solid leads and have given confusing and sometimes contradictory statements on the investigation.

A spokesman for the ruling military junta on Thursday said the attack was unlikely to be the work of an international terror group, the day an arrest warrant issued for the main suspect described him as an “unnamed foreigner”. Police have not said how they reached that conclusion.

The national police chief, Somyot Poompanmoung, has furthermore suggested as many as 10 people could have played a part in the bombing at the Erawan shrine but later conceded the figure was theoretical and did not mean police had 10 suspects.

Thai authorities had at first been reluctant to seek help in the investigation into the blast but on Thursday appealed for Interpol’s assistance in finding the man accused of being the prime suspect.

Tourists have also been asked to help. Staff on a British Airways flight from Singapore to Sydney on Thursday also appealed to passengers who had visited the Erawan shrine, a major tourist attraction in the heart of the Thai capital, to come forward. They said those who took photographs at the site in the days before the attack should contact Australian federal police.

The main evidence so far in the case appears to be CCTV footage of a man in a yellow T-shirt dropping a black backpack at the shrine minutes before the detonation.

Authorities on Wednesday released an electronic sketch of a thin man with dark, shaggy hair and a light complexion, wearing black-rimmed glasses but later said he may have been wearing a disguise.

Observers have criticised the way the blast scene was contaminated in the hours after the attack, as journalists and passersby walked into the area where glass and chunks of human flesh still lay on the road. Less than 24 hours after the attack, authorities had cleaned the area and paved over the small bomb crater.