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Suspect had 'key role' in Thai shrine bombing

September 9, 2015

Thai police say a key suspect now in custody handed an explosive device in a backpack to a man who allegedly carried out a deadly attack on a Bangkok shrine last month. The motive for the blast remains unclear.

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Policeman standing before the reopened Erawan Shrine in Bangkok NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images
Image: Getty Images/AFP/N. Asfouri

Thai police said on Wednesday that a foreign national detained on suspicion of involvement in last month's deadly bombing at a popular Hindu shrine in the capital, Bangkok, has admitted to handing the alleged bomber a backpack containing a bomb just before the blast took place.

"This is the area where he met the man in a yellow shirt to exchange the backpack," national police spokesman Prawu Thavornsiri told reporters outside a Bangkok railway station, where police were carrying out a reenactment of the suspect's alleged movements before and after the bombing.

A man wearing a yellow shirt was seen on security footage apparently placing the backpack at the shrine moments before the blast.

The suspect, 25-year-old Yusufu Mierili, whose name has appeared in several variants, is one of two foreign nationals detained under suspicion of involvement in the blast, which killed 20 people, mostly ethnic Chinese tourists, at the well-known Erawan Shrine on the night of August 17.

Uighur links?

Mierili was arrested last week at the Thai-Cambodia border in possession of a Chinese passport. Police say he has admitted playing a central role in the attack, although his motive remains unclear.

He has not yet been formally charged.

Mierili told police he had brought the backpack from an apartment in the Nong Chok district on the edge of Bangkok. Police found bomb-making materials in an apartment in Nong Chok during a raid on August 29 during which the other foreign suspect was arrested.

One of the theories put forward is that the attack may have been to avenge the forced repatriation by Thailand of 109 ethnic Uighurs to China in July.

Police have said that the Chinese passport held by Mierili gave his birthplace as Xinjiang, home to the Uighur Muslim minority, which has long reported facing persecution in China.

Public reenactments before the media are a common feature of Thai criminal investigations. Critics of the practice say they imply a suspect's guilt before the trial.

tj/jil (AFP, AP)