500 witnesses to be called for Bangkok bombing trial

By Max Constant

BANGKOK

Nearly 500 witnesses will be called to testify at a military court trying two Uighur accused of carrying out a bombing that killed 20 people in Bangkok last year, a lawyer said Wednesday.

The counsel for Adem Karadag, who has said that he was forced to confess to having planted the Aug. 17 bomb that left 125 people injured, said the plaintiff side had 447 witnesses.

“As for the defense, 41 witnesses already filed with the court, but I will submit seven other names,” the Khaosod news website quoted Choochart Khanphai as saying.

Karadag, 31, and Yusuf Mieraili, 29, have been charged with ten counts of criminal violation each, including pre-meditated murder -- which carries the death penalty -- possession of explosives, and legal entry into Thailand.

At a February hearing, they denied all charges, with the exception of Karadag admitting to illegal entry.

Mieraili and Karadag -- who has also been identified by Thai police as Bilal Mohammed and as Bilal Turk -- were arrested around two weeks after the fatal explosion at a Hindu shrine in downtown Bangkok.

Police have said that both suspects have confessed to being paid by a mastermind to build and plant the bomb, but Khanphai has petitioned the Bangkok court on the ground that his client said he had been tortured by plainclothes men while in military custody.

"My client was intimidated by these men, they were waterboarded, threatened with large dogs and threatened with deportation to China," he told reporters after the February hearing.

At the time, Mieraili -- who had been assigned a military lawyer by the court -- said he would try to find money to take a civilian lawyer.

Thai courts had issued arrest warrants for 17 suspects in connection with the bombing, but only Karadag and Mieraili were captured.

Both are detained at a prison within a Bangkok military facility where the deaths of two lese-majeste suspects since October has raised questions.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva called in November for the closure of the facility.

In the past year, allegations of torturing suspects to gain confessions have been leveled at both Thai police and military.

Both Karadag and Mieraili have refused to provide their addresses in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region out of “fear of reprisal" from the government, who the Muslim Turkic minority group accuses of curtailing their cultural and religious rights.

While police have claimed the bombing was masterminded by human traffickers, angry at Thai authorities for clamping down on their networks, Khanphai has said that the bomb was connected to the controversial deportation of a Uighur group held in Thai immigration centers to China.