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Bangkok bomb: Thai police hunt more suspects after arrest Bangkok bomb: Thai police hunt more suspects after arrest
(about 2 hours later)
Police probing Thailand’s deadliest bombing widened their net in the search for more suspects on Sunday after a foreigner was arrested and stacks of fake passports and bomb-making materials were found during a raid on a Bangkok apartment block. Security forces in Thailand have widened their search for further suspects after a foreign national was arrested with bomb-making materials and fake passports on the outskirts of Bangkok, two weeks after an explosion at the Erawan shrine killed 20 people.
The 28-year-old man, who has been in Thailand since January 2014, was detained on charges of possessing illegal explosives. Police have not revealed his identity or nationality. Police have charged the 28-year-old man with possessing illegal explosives, although they have not revealed his name or nationality. The man’s neighbours say he lived with another foreigner.
Related: Bangkok bomb – in picturesRelated: Bangkok bomb – in pictures
The August 17 bomb at Bangkok’s Erawan Shrine, where locals and Asian tourists flock each day, stunned Thailand. Police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said the man was believed to be part of a network that carried out the attack as well as a smaller explosion that caused no injuries one day later. “Our preliminary investigation shows that he is related to both bombings,” he said.
Fourteen foreigners, seven from mainland China and Hong Kong, were among the 20 killed in an attack the ruling junta said was intended to cripple an already flagging economy. But police have not divulged whether the man is the prime suspect, captured the night of the bombing on CCTV in a yellow T-shirt dropping a black rucksack off at the scene minutes before the blast. Until now, that footage has been the main evidence in the investigation into the worst peacetime bombing in Thailand’s history.
Police have been criticised for an erratic investigation that had, until this weekend, uncovered few clues about who was behind the blast. No group has claimed responsibility. The deputy national police chief, Chaktip Chaijinda, said on Thai television on Sunday that police were actively looking for more suspects.
Officials declined to say if the man arrested had provided new information, but deputy national police chief Chaktip Chaijinda told Thai television more suspects were being sought. The arrest is the first potential breakthrough in a case that appeared to have stalled. The explosion at the Hindu temple in central Bangkok – an attraction popular with Chinese Buddhist tourists as well as Thais – also left more than 120 people injured, Many of the casualties were foreigners, throwing an international spotlight on the Thai police’s handling of the case.
Police and residents in Bangkok’s Nong Chok district said the suspect rented four apartments on the same floor of the rundown building. The authorities have been criticised for releasing contradictory information in the days after the attack, speculating about differing motives and for rejecting offers for help from international investigators.
A man and woman living on the same floor told Reuters the suspect did not live alone and they had seen a taller man with similar appearance entering and leaving several times each day. They had not seen the second man since Friday. The military junta, which took power in a coup during May 2014 after months of violent protests, has vowed to bring stability and is looking to solve the case promptly, wary of the effects the uncertainty may have on the country’s vital tourism industry.
“We’ve seen two of them, frequently. One was the arrested man, but there’s another, he’s much taller,” said the man, who requested anonymity because he feared for his safety. Police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang hinted on Saturday at the motive for the attack, saying the arrested man was “taking personal revenge for his comrades”, without giving further details. “It’s unlikely to be terrorism. It’s not an international terrorist act,” he told a news conference.
The detained man was reclusive but always appeared focused and walked with intent on his rare forays outside. They said he was often seen on his knees praying outside the room. Police provided photographs of the man who did not appear to be Thai, sitting in front of two police officers with his hands cuffed. In front of him lay plastic bags with what authorities said were bomb-making materials – 5mm ball bearings and wires.
“I still fear danger,” the woman said. “We don’t know if the other man has been arrested.” He was apprehended on Saturday in Nong Jok, on the northern outskirts of Bangkok, in an operation that involved 100 officers.
Speculation has focused on which groups could have motive and capability to carry out the bombing. Authorities later released a photo of the man’s passport, which appears to be badly made, with two expiry dates shown. The document was purportedly a Turkish passport, belonging to a man born in 1987.
These have included southern ethnic Malay insurgents, opponents of the military government, foreign militant groups and sympathisers of Uighur Muslims. The Bangkok Post quoted spokesman Thavornsiri as saying that the man was not cooperating with police interrogators despite authorities providing English and other language translators. The paper said his apartment was raided after police listened to mobile phone calls made around the shrine on the night of the attack.
Thailand forcibly repatriated more than 100 Uighurs to China last month, prompting international outrage. Police and residents said the suspect had rented four apartments on the same floor in the block.
Many of the minority Uighurs from China’s far west have sought passage to Turkey via Southeast Asia. A man and woman living on the same floor said another taller man with a similar appearance entered and left the apartment each day but had not been seen since Friday.
On Saturday, police indicated the person arrested was the prime suspect, a young man with shaggy dark hair who wore a yellow shirt and was picked out on security cameras dropping off a backpack at the shrine and leaving before the bomb went off. “We’ve seen two of them, frequently. One was the arrested man, but there’s another, he’s much taller,” the man told Reuters, requesting anonymity because he feared for his safety.
“I still fear danger,” the woman said. “We don’t know if the other man has been arrested.” They said the detained man was often seen on his knees praying outside the room.
The arrested man looks markedly different to the prime suspect, whose face has appeared in a detailed electronic sketch, showing a thin man with dark, shaggy hair and a light complexion, wearing black-rimmed glasses. But he could have been wearing a disguise and the CCTV footage is grainy.
The sketch has been widely circulated in Thailand, including on roadside billboards, along with offers of a £200,000 for information leading to an arrest.
Immigration officers at Bangkok’s international airport also have printouts of the digital sketch. Some show him without glasses, wearing a hat or with no hair.
The Turkish passports shown on Saturday caused Thai media to speculate that ethnic Uighur, a Turkish-speaking Muslim minority from China’s western Xinjiang region, might be behind the bombing.
Thailand forcibly returned 109 Uighurs to China in July, angering the community and causing an outcry from human rights groups and the United Nations who said they could face persecution and abuse. Many Uighurs have fled to south-east Asia hoping to then travel to Turkey, which has strong cultural links to the group and has sheltered them for decades.
Observers have also suggested that separatists in the south who have been waging an insurgency for years could be behind the bombing, but they have never carried out a large-scale attack on foreigners.
Reuters contributed to this report