Bangkok: A foreigner arrested in connection with the deadly bombing at a temple in August that killed 20 people is the bomber who actually planted the explosives and seen on CCTV images, Thai police said on Saturday.
So far 17 people have been charged with colluding in committing premeditated murders and attempted murders and colluding in an explosion that caused deaths, police General Sriwara Rangsipramanakul said. Meanwhile, the military court has approved warrants for the arrest of 17 suspects linked in the Bangkok blast, police spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri said.
Investigators said they are convinced that Adem Karadag, or Bilal Muhammed, is the man seen in CCTV images in a yellow T-shirt who left a backpack containing an explosive device at the Erawan Brahma temple shrine here on August 17.
“It is confirmed that Adem is the man in the yellow shirt based on CCTV footage, eyewitness accounts and his own confession,” Prawut said. “After he placed the bomb at the shrine he called a motorbike taxi and changed his shirt at a restroom in (nearby) Lumpini Park,” he said.
The explosion left 20 people dead and more than 100 others injured; many foreign tourists were among the casualties. Sriwara said police have evidence to prove that Karadag was the bomber. The suspect had earlier confessed his role.
“Investigators had long suspected that Karadag, who was arrested at his apartment room in a Bangkok suburb late last month, was the bomber but they had no clinching evidence to prove it,” Prawut said. “Now there is more evidence and there are witnesses who confirm our earlier suspicion,” he said, adding the police would soon make public “the whole picture” of this case.
Meanwhile, national police chief Somyot Poompanmuang has instructed his adviser on forensic science, Jarumporn Suramanee, to work with the Metropolitan Police for digital ‘superimposition’ of images to determine whether Karadag is the bomber, whose image was caught on security cameras.
Somyot said an ally country and a company with the necessary equipment had offered to help with the digital superimposition, but he declined to identify them.
The police chief said that personally he was convinced that Karadag was the bomber.
PTI