Thai police arrest suspect in Bangkok bombing

Bangkok, August 29

The police hunting for the perpetrators of Thailand’s deadliest bombing arrested a suspect on Saturday they said fitted the description of a man seen on security cameras leaving a rucksack at the site of the August 17 Bangkok blast.

The nationality of the man could not be confirmed, but he was a foreigner, national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri told local television.T

The police raided an apartment in a northern suburb of the capital on Saturday afternoon and discovered possible bomb-making materials that could have been used in the evening attack in Bangkok’s bustling commercial heart.

The bomb tore through the crowded Erawan Shrine, one of the country’s top tourist attractions and close to high-end hotels and malls, killing 20 persons and wounding scores more.

Among the dead were 14 foreigners, including seven from mainland China and Hong Kong.

Several television channels showed an image of a passport they said was found at the apartment in the northern Bangkok suburb where the man was arrested during a police raid. It could not be immediately confirmed whether the passport was impounded, nor whether it belonged to the suspect.

The document appeared to be a Turkish passport, belonging to a man born in 1987. Police earlier said they had discovered possible bomb-making materials that could have been used in the evening attack in Bangkok's bustling commercial heart on August 17.

The suspect “looks like the one we are looking for”, said national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri.

“They also found a lot of materials which can be used to make bombs.”

The prime suspect in the attack is a young man with shaggy dark hair dressed in a yellow shirt seen on the grainy closed-circuit television footage dropping off a backpack and casually leaving the scene before the bomb went off.

Police and military personnel had cordoned off the four-storey budget apartment on Saturday from scores of media and onlookers, and the arrested man could not be seen, a Reuters photographer said.

Thai television showed a photograph of a handcuffed man who appeared to be foreign, in his 20s, with a beard and hair shaven short. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the image.

The police had made little progress in the investigation into what the military government said was an attack aimed at hurting Thailand’s troubled economy.

Thai authorities had offered a $85,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the main suspect.

Officials have had different theories about the identity of the man, saying he could be foreign, or a Thai man pretending to be foreign.

The police have been criticised for providing contradictory information, and Reuters reporters on Friday found the authorities had not checked some CCTV footage taken minutes after the blast, which featured a man dressed like the chief suspect. — Reuters