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Suspect admits to Thai police was in vicinity of bombing

Foreigner arrested on country's border with Cambodia says was present at Erawan Shrine where attack happened, but did not carry bomb

02.09.2015 - Update : 02.09.2015
Suspect admits to Thai police was in vicinity of bombing

By Max Constant and CS Thana

BANGKOK

A suspect in the Aug. 17 bombing in Bangkok has admitted to police that he was present at the Erawan Shrine where the attack happened, but claimed that he did not carry the bomb, local media reported Wednesday.

Deputy-police chief Chaktip Chaijinda, the officer leading the investigation team into the bombing, told the Bangkok Post on Wednesday that the foreigner -- arrested on the country's border with Cambodia -- had confessed during interrogation but denied placing the bomb.

Police spokesman Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri said in a televised statement that the man's fingerprints matched those found on a container used for holding bomb equipment seized during a weekend raid on a Bangkok suburban apartment.

Saturday's raid yielded the arrest of a male suspect, a large amount of bomb-making material, including ball bearings similar to those used in the bomb which killed 20 people in central Bangkok Aug. 17, and around 200 fake Turkish passports.

"We can confirm that this man is directly involved with the bomb material," Thavornsiri said.

Police also released Wednesday an arrest warrant for another foreign national, with accompanying immigration photos and passport pictures.

The man is one of the few people under investigation deemed to be travelling on a genuine passport. The first man to be arrested had in his possession a fake Turkish travel document and police have said that the second arrestee was travelling on a Chinese passport - although that is suspected of being false.

Meanwhile, the nationalities of neither of the arrested men have been released.

On Wednesday, Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Weerachon Sukontapatipak acknowledged instructions given by junta leader-cum-prime minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha on “sensitive” issues.

“It’s not appropriate to pinpoint who is what nationality,” Sukontapatipak said. “Even though there may be connection to this or that nation, it doesn't mean there is a connection to that government.”

Authorities have yet to tie the suspects to any one country, instead promoting a theory that the attack was born of a grudge foreign human traffickers, whose business was hurt by a Thai government clampdown following the June discovery of corpses at a southern people trafficking camp .

“This may be the motive behind their actions,” Chan-ocha has said. “They were angry and wanted to retaliate against security forces for the crackdown."

The latest suspect to be named is reported to be the husband of a Thai woman, named by police as Wanna Suansan, who rented the apartments where bomb-making materials were found.

Suansan and the man are reported to have left Thailand more than six weeks before the bombing.

According to immigration records obtained by Khaosod website, she departed Thailand from Phuket International Airport on July 1 on an Etihad Airways flight bound for Abu Dhabi with her husband and infant child.

The man arrested Tuesday is now considered a prime suspect in the bombing by the Thai authorities, but they are yet to clarify if he is the man in a yellow shirt pictured on CCTV footage -- despite an initial statement to that effect from the country's junta leader-cum prime minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha.

On Wednesday, police chief Gen. Somyot Pumpanmuang told Voice TV channel that he was "not sure" if the suspect arrested near the Cambodian border was the yellow-shirted man filmed leaving a bag at a Hindu Shrine in central Bangkok on Aug. 17 prior to the explosion.

The ensuing blast killed 20 people, among them 14 foreign tourists, and injured over 130 others.

Media have speculated on a connection between the bombing at a shrine -- popular with tourists, especially Chinese -- and Thailand sending 109 ethnic Uighur to China, from a group of around 350 who were being held in Thai immigration centers.

Around 180 had earlier been sent to Turkey, which welcomes Uighur as its own as they are among a number of Turkic tribes that inhabit a region many Turks call East Turkestan and consider to be part of Central Asia, not China.

Gen. Thavornsiri has said that the bombing was not related to "international terrorism", but rather to "people smuggling".

"The gang [to which the suspect belongs] is unsatisfied with police arresting illegal entrants," he told a Thai TV channel. 

"The suspect had more than 200 fake passports when he was arrested. It is a network that fakes passports and sends the illegal migrants towards third countries."

Deputy-police chief Chaktip Chaijinda was quoted by a Bangkok Post journalist as saying Wednesday that the man arrested Tuesday carried a Chinese passport with Xinjiang as the birthplace, but -- given the large amounts of forged passports discovered in the apartment -- its authenticity has still to to be verified.

Xinjiang province, in northwestern China, is populated mostly by ethnic Uighur.

*Anadolu Agency correspondent Diyar Guldogan contributed to this story from Ankara.

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