Apartment search uncovers 2 new suspects in Bangkok shrine attack
Print Edition
THE hunt for those behind the Bangkok shrine blast narrowed yesterday as police said they had two new suspects after more bomb-making paraphernalia was found in a suburban apartment.
But two weeks after the unprecedented attack brought carnage to the city’s commercial center, the motive remains a mystery.
The bomb that hit the Erawan Shrine on August 17 and killed 20 people, most of them ethnic Chinese, was Thailand’s worst single mass-casualty attack.
Police are now seeking a Thai woman and an unidentified man after bomb-making materials were discovered over the weekend in an apartment in the suburb of Minburi.
Investigators believe it was used as a hideout by the network that carried out the attack.
“We found fertilizer bags, watches, radio controls — parts to make bombs and electric charges,” said police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri. “We are confident they are the same group.”
Police detained an unidentified foreign man on Saturday at another flat nearby, where detonators, industrial pipes and ball bearings were found.
Dozens of fake Turkish passports were also found in his flat, police said.
In a televised broadcast, Prawut displayed a photograph of the wanted Thai woman taken from an official identity card, showing her wearing a black hijab.
He named her as 26-year-old Wanna Suansan — also known by the Muslim name Misaloh — the first time a suspect in the bombing probe has been identified.
A sketch of an unidentified man with a moustache was also broadcast.
A police source close to the investigation said the suspect’s family in Thailand’s southern province of Phang Nga had been questioned and had said she was in Turkey.
“Her parents were shocked to see her picture on television. Her younger sister then spoke to her (by phone) in Turkey,” the source said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Authorities have been at pains to play down any suggestion the attack was launched by international terrorists or targeted Chinese visitors in a nation where tourism represents nearly 10 percent of the economy.
Police have said the only suspect in custody, whose pictures showed he was thin with heavy stubble, was part of a criminal group who helped illegal migrants obtain counterfeit documents and that the attack on the shrine was retaliation for a crackdown on their lucrative trade.
Asked if the detainee was linked with smuggling Uygur migrants to Thailand, junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha refused to rule out the theory.
“Everything is partly involved,” he told reporters. “Our domestic situation, or it could be linked with people-smuggling.”
But some analysts have poured cold water on the idea of criminal gangs going to such extremes of violence.
“If it was linked to organized crime, where’s the profit motive? How does killing 20 innocent civilians help your business?” Zachary Abuza, an expert on Southeast Asian militant groups, told reporters.
Reporters accompanied police during their search of flats in Minburi on Sunday but no items were shown to the press and there was no announcement then that evidence had been discovered.
The area is near Nong Chok, the suburb where the foreigner was arrested on Saturday.
Police are working with “several embassies” to try to ascertain his identity of the man. Police chief Somyot Poompanmoung told reporters his interrogation had yielded “very useful” information.
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