Thai police on Saturday said an arrest warrant had been issued for a “Chinese” man over last month’s deadly Bangkok blast, backtracking after they earlier identified the suspect as a member of the country’s Uighur minority.
National police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said the suspect was a Uighur according to his passport, as authorities released a photo of the mustached and short-haired suspect, with a caption that identified him as Abudusataer Abudureheman, or “Ishan,” of “Uighur” ethnicity and “Chinese” nationality.
However, shortly afterward police sent reporters another photo of the suspect — this time removing mention of his ethnicity and requesting that media “drop the word Uighur.”
PHOTO: EPA
Later on Saturday, Prawut said he wanted to “correct” his earlier comment, without explaining why or denying whether the man was of Uighur ethnicity, saying only the suspect was Chinese.
“I cannot confirm his whereabouts,” the spokesman added.
Confusing and sometimes contradictory official statements have characterized updates into the investigation of the attack which killed 20 people, the majority ethnic Chinese visitors, at a religious shrine in the capital’s bustling downtown district on Aug. 17.
Analysts have increasingly pointed towards militants from China’s mostly Muslim Uighur minority — or their supporters — in revenge for Thailand’s forced deportation of 109 Uighur refugees to an uncertain future in China in July. Until Saturday, Thai police had avoided attempts to directly connect the blast with the kingdom’s major ally China or the Uighurs.
Thai authorities are already holding in custody two foreign men, whose nationalities remain unconfirmed, over the attack.
Ishan, who police say is 27 years old, is among another 11 suspects wanted by police.
Prawut said Ishan, who left Thailand a day before the blast and is wanted on the charge of “jointly possessing illegal military supplies,” belonged to the criminal network that police believe is responsible — but he was “not the mastermind” of the attack. That appeared to be yet another contradiction to a statement, also released on Saturday, by Thai immigration police that said: “According to security agencies, Ishan is the one who plotted, ordered and funded the attack.” That statement also referred to Ishan being of Uighur ethnicity.
It was not immediately clear why the police retracted the Uighur claim, but Thailand’s junta has been keen to avoid awkward diplomatic questions — in particular from China, whom is has relied on more strongly as an ally since last year’s coup.
Uighurs have long accused Beijing of religious and cultural repression, with scores believed to have fled China’s northwestern Xinjiang region — home to around 10 million of the group — in recent years, often heading to Turkey via Southeast Asia.
Thailand’s recent deportation of Uighurs had sparked violent protests in Turkey, where nationalist hardliners see the minority as part of a global Turkic-speaking family.
The warrant issued on Saturday is the 12th over the unprecedented attack on the Thai capital, which targeted a Hindu shrine particularly popular with Chinese tourists who believe prayers there bring good fortune. Mystery still surrounds the motives of the group accused of being behind the attack and Thai authorities have been careful not to suggest that Chinese visitors were targeted.
One of the detained suspects, Yusufu Mieraili, was arrested last month with a Chinese passport registering his birthplace as Xinjiang, but police did not confirm his ethnicity or nationality nor that of the other detained suspect, Adem Karadag, who was arrested at a Bangkok apartment in possession of bomb-making materials and scores of fake Turkish passports.
Mieraili has confessed to handing over a backpack containing the 4kg bomb to another unnamed man who was later caught on CCTV wearing a yellow T-shirt and placing the bag at the busy shrine moments before the blast.
On Thursday, Bangladesh police confirmed a suspect from the bombing network had arrived in Dhaka from Bangkok on Aug. 16 before flying out to Beijing two weeks later.
However, local Thai media reports have said the suspect flew on to Turkey rather than China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema