Post by Admin on Sept 1, 2015 20:16:35 GMT
Thai police have arrested a main suspect in the bomb attack on the capital last month that killed 20 people, the prime minister has announced. Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters the man was arrested on the Thai crossing with Cambodia. “It’s true. He has been arrested at Sa Kaeo checkpoint,” the leader of the junta said during an afternoon press conference on Tuesday.
It was the second arrest announced by authorities relating to the attack on the Erawan shrine in Bangkok on 17 August, the most deadly peacetime bombing in the country’s history. Police on Saturday detained another foreigner who they said was found with bomb-making materials in his apartment and was linked to a people-smuggling gang. However, he was not believed to be the person who was captured on security cameras on the night of the attack dropping off a black bag at the shrine.
When Prayuth was asked if the second foreigner arrested was the man shown in grainy footage with dark, shaggy hair and a yellow T-shirt on the night of the blast, he said: “We are interrogating. He is a main suspect and a foreigner.” He asked reporters not to speculate about the arrested man and his potential motives. “Don’t say just yet it’s about this and that. It could affect international affairs,” he said. “We have to do a lot of tests, fingerprints. If he is the guy, he is the guy.”
Thai media shared a photo on Tuesday of a Chinese passport they said belonged to the man arrested at the Cambodian border. It showed a similar-looking man to the person in the electronic sketch. The passport showed he was born in 1989 and came from China’s western Xinjiang region. Xinjiang is home to ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority in western China. There has been speculation that Uighur militants were behind the bombing after Thailand forcibly returned 109 Uighurs to China in July. The deportations angered the Uighur community and caused an outcry from human rights groups and the UN, who said they could face persecution and abuse.