Thai police conducted a public re-enactment of the Bangkok bombing on Wednesday, escorting a key suspect they accuse of handing explosives to the bomber at a train station on 17 August before the blast that killed 20 people at the Erawan shrine.
Wearing a bulletproof vest, Yusufu Mierili was taken to Hua Lamphong train station – where the handover of the black backpack allegedly took place – and later to the shrine in central Bangkok where the explosion ripped through rush-hour traffic in the country’s worst ever peacetime bombing.
Armed commandoes in black balaclavas and police escorted Mierili, whose hands were bound. Public re-enactments are common in Thai police investigations although they have been condemned as suggesting the suspect’s criminality and also putting those accused at risk of attack from angry members of the public.
Photographers and cameramen swarmed Mierili at the shrine where the suspected bomber – who has not been apprehended – was captured on grainy CCTV footage in a yellow T-shirt leaving a black backpack by a bench. Mierili was also wearing a yellow T-shirt although it is not clear if this was ordered by the police.
At the train station, national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said: “This place is where he met with the yellow-shirt man to exchange a backpack.
“Yusufu said the backpack that he carried was heavy and it was a bomb.”
The explosion at the Hindu temple – a central Bangkok attraction popular with Chinese Buddhist tourists as well as Thais – also left more than 120 people injured. Many of the casualties were foreigners, throwing an international spotlight on the Thai police’s handling of the case.
The authorities have been criticised for releasing contradictory information in the days after the attack, speculating about differing motives and for rejecting offers of help from international investigators.
Mierili was arrested last week at the Thai-Cambodian border and police say his fingerprints were found on a container of gunpowder at a Bangkok apartment.
Police have suggested the bombing relates to a criminal gang. There is growing speculation in the country that the attack is linked to Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority in western China.
Thailand forcibly returned 109 Uighurs to China in July. The deportations angered the Uighur community and caused an outcry from human rights groups and the UN amid fears they could face persecution and abuse.
Many Uighurs have fled to Thailand in the hope of travelling on to Turkey, which has strong cultural links to the group and has sheltered them for decades.
Thai authorities have suggested at least two of the suspects are Turkish and a leaked photo, purportedly of Mierili’s passport, suggested he was from the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang, home to the Uighurs.
