Thai courts approve new warrants for Bangkok blast

By CS Thana

BANGKOK

Thai courts have approved 17 new warrants in connection with a bombing in Bangkok last month that killed 20 people and injured more than 100 others.

The Bangkok Military Court approved the new orders, which included charges of premeditated murder and causing a deadly explosion, the Bangkok Post reported Saturday.

The charge of premeditated murder carries the death penalty.

A Metropolitan police spokesperson, who declined to be named citing regulation, told Anadolu Agency that the new warrants overlapped with previous ones for possession of bomb-making materials, but were issued because police had enough evidence to connect the bomb-making materials to the scene of the blast.

Thai police claimed Friday that a Uighur man already in custody on suspicion of involvement in the blast at a popular Hindu shrine is in fact the bomber.

Srivara Rangsi-prammanaku, head of Bangkok Police, told reporters that investigative teams had found enough evidence and witnesses to “definitely” prove that a man Thailand calls Adem Karadag – whose lawyer says is actually named Bilal Muhammed -- was the man seen in CCTV footage planting the Aug. 17 bomb at the Erawan Shrine.

The Uighur are a Muslim Turkic minority mostly from Xinjiang in northwestern China who claim their cultural and religious rights are curtailed by the Chinese authorities. Thousands have fled with the aid of people smugglers, some to settle in Turkey.

Muhammed was apprehended Aug. 29 in possession of a badly forged Turkish passport at the same apartment where bomb-making materials and hundreds of other fake Turkish passports were found.

Responding to the impending charges, Muhammed’s lawyer Choochart Khanphai told Anadolu Agency on Friday that the allegations “did not add up”, noting his client had been interrogated through the night earlier this week, just a day after being hospitalized.

Khanphai also maintained his client was not in the country at the time of the bombing.

“My client arrived in Thailand on Aug. 21, days after the bombing,” he said.

He added: “Muhammed knows nothing whatsoever about the bombing.”

He said his client was passing though Thailand to Malaysia, where he was looking for a job.

Khanphai claimed Muhammed -- one of three suspects arrested to date -- is a Turkish national, but said that he had admitted to traveling on a fake Turkish passport.

Khanphai has previously said that the 30-year-old was born in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi and arrived in Turkey in 2004 where he gained citizenship and employment as a truck driver.

Since the explosion, the police investigation has focused on human trafficking gangs responsible for smuggling refugees from China to Turkey.

Police maintain the bombing was not an act of terrorism but a revenge attack by criminal elements upset at Thailand's crackdown on human trafficking.