Thailand arrest main suspect of Bangkok blast

No one has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, sparking an array of theories about who might be behind it.

Thai police on Tuesday morning arrested an important suspect of the recent deadly bombing attack at Erawan Shrine in downtown Bangkok, police spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri said.

Thai authorities said the first suspect arrested on Saturday had a Turkish passport, but said it was a fake.

Chaktip said the man was insisting on his innocence during his interrogation.

On Tuesday (Sept 1), arrest warrants were issued for three other suspects linked to the bombings, with at least one of them, Ahmet Bozonglan, identified as Turkish. The blast left 20 people lifeless, greater than half of them foreigners, & over 120 injured.

“It’s natural that the suspect will deny he did it, but we still have to continue to look into that”, deputy national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters.

But analysts say crime alone was unlikely to be the motivating factor behind a bomb that brought such carnage.

Some commentators speculated that the most likely culprits were Turkish far-right groups unhappy with Thailand’s deportation of Uighur refugees to China.

Turkey is home to a large Uighur community as they are related to Turks.

He is facing charges of conspiracy to possess unauthorized war materials.

“We can confirm that this man is directly involved with the bomb material”, he added.

The police spokesman later posted a picture of Davutoglu on Twitter, showing a man with dark hair and a thin moustache at what is believed to be airport immigration.

Police say she rented a separate flat also in the city suburbs where bomb-making equipment was also found.

Thai authorities have issued three more arrest warrants – making seven in total.

At his apartment, they seized more than 200 passports, an unknown number of which appeared to be Turkish and possibly fake.

They believe the foreign man, arrested close to the Cambodian border, is a key part of a network behind the attack.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Emrah Davutoglu, the husband of a previously named suspect, on suspicion of organizing and providing accommodation to other suspects, Thailand national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said.

Thai military authorities have been interrogating the 28-year-old man, but they have not yet released his name or nationality.

Thai officials have said they believe the suspects in the bombing might be involved with ethnic Uighurs attempting to flee China and reach Turkey, where members of the Muslim-Turkic group have tried to resettle. The suspect in the video, wearing a yellow T-shirt, is carrying a backpack that he places on a bench before leaving.

The suspect was arrested in the forest of Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province near the border of Cambodia at around 11 a.m. local time, Winthai told a televised press briefing.

Gao Yan Ping, from Jiangxi province, China, is overcome with emotion at the Police General Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, after he arrived to claim the body and remains of his daughter and his wife who were killed in the bombing at the Erawan Hindu Shrine.

Numerous casualties in the bombing at a popular religious shrine in central Bangkok were ethnic Chinese tourists.