Thailand Bombing Suspect Arrested at Border

Thai authorities arrested a man they believe is part of a group responsible for a deadly bombing in central Bangkok two weeks ago, the prime minister announced Tuesday. He said the suspect resembles a yellow-shirted man in a surveillance video who police say planted the bomb.

“It would be great if he were (the bomber). Then we will know who they are, where they came from, who’s behind this,” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters.

He said the man is a foreigner and was detained in eastern Thailand near the Cambodian border, one of several border crossings where authorities set up checkpoints after the Aug. 17 bombing that killed 20 people, many of them foreign tourists, and injured more than 120.

Prayuth said authorities plan to check fingerprints and conduct DNA tests to establish whether the man is the bomber. Police say they obtained the bomber’s DNA from a motorcycle taxi and a three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxi that he used.

Spokesmen for police and the military junta that rules Thailand both later said the arrested man resembles the suspect they have been seeking for planting the bomb.

No one has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, sparking an array of theories about who might be behind it. Police have suggested that the suspects were part of a people-smuggling group who held a grudge against Thai authorities.

Speculation has grown that the suspect might be part of a group seeking to avenge Thailand’s forced repatriation of ethnic Uighurs to China in July. Prayuth on Monday linked the two theories, suggesting the bombers might have been involved in smuggling Uighurs out of China.

Prayuth said officials knew from their investigation that people involved in the bombing were about to flee the country and had traced the man to the Aranyaprathet district in Sa Kaeo province, a crossing point to Cambodia. The prime minister described the man as a piece in a jigsaw puzzle that would connect various parts of the case, which included a bomb that exploded harmlessly in a river next to a busy pier in Bangkok the day after the shrine blast.

Prayuth warned against speculating about the arrested man until more information is learned.

“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.”

“Officials are certain he is a main suspect in this case,” national police spokesman Prawuth Thavornsiri said later at a news conference, adding that the authorities are waiting for witnesses to confirm whether he is the yellow-shirted man.

He said the man is being held by the military under Article 44 of its interim constitution, which gives the prime minister absolute power to issue any order deemed necessary to keep public order or strengthen public unity and harmony.

Prawuth said three new arrest warrants have been issued in connection with the case, bringing the total to seven. Two were named persons — he could not provide spellings for the names of the men, whose nationalities were unknown — while the third was not identified by name but was described as a Turkish national. He displayed pictures of the three.

This article appeared in print in the September 2nd, 2015 edition of Hamodia.