Police widen suspect search after the arrest of a 28-year-old foreigner though no group has yet claimed responsibility for Erawan shrine blast

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Thai police have said that a bomb attack at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok, which killed 20 people two weeks ago, may have been launched by a people-smuggling gang in response to a crackdown on the trade.



The claim comes after security forces widened their search for suspects following the arrest of a foreign national who was found with bomb-making materials and fake passports on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said authorities believed the man was part of an organised crime group which sold counterfeit documents to illegal immigrants.

“They [the gang] are unsatisfied with police arresting illegal entrants,” he told Thailand’s Channel 3. “It’s a network that fakes nationalities and sends them [illegal migrants] on to third countries,” he added, without explaining how police had come to this conclusion.

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.

Bangkok bomb – in pictures Read more

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.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thai police carry out further examinations of an apartment block in Bangkok, where a foreign national was arrested on Saturday as part of the investigation into the bombing of a shrine in the city

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.

The deputy national police chief, Chaktip Chaijinda, said on Thai television on Sunday that police were actively looking for more suspects.

Thailand is a major regional hub for people smuggling and trafficking and the government has been keen to show it is cracking down on the trade after dozens of bodies were found in a jungle prison camp earlier this year, victims believed to be held for ransom by criminal smugglers. Thailand has pressed charges against more than 100 people, including an army general.

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.

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.

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.

Police chief Somyot Poompanmoung 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.

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.

He was apprehended on Saturday in Nong Jok, on the northern outskirts of Bangkok, in an operation that involved 100 officers.

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.

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.

Police and residents said the suspect had rented four apartments on the same floor in the block.

A man and a 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.

“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.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dashcam footage shows the moment a bomb explodes near a popular shrine in Bangkok. Link to video

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 £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 Turkic-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 UN 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 and AFP contributed to this report