The mysterious foreign-looking man wearing a yellow T-shirt seen in CCTV footage dumping a backpack containing a bomb at the Erawan Shrine mid-August minutes before a powerful blast killed 20 people at the popular attraction has finally been identified.
No, no new arrest has been made; police simply figured out in the end that the first suspect they arrested nearly four weeks ago in connection with the bomb blast is actually the yellow-shirted prime suspect himself.
Two days ago, the Bangkok Post first reported that unnamed “security sources” had all of a sudden “found new evidence” implicating yet again the first detained suspect.
Adem Karadag, who claims to be naturalized Turkish citizen originally from Xinjiang, China, named Mohammed Bilaturk, was arrested on August 29 in a rented apartment on the eastern outskirts of Bangkok where police also found bomb-making material and dozens of fake Turkish passports.
One of the fake passports “identified” him as Adem Karadag; his real identity and nationality however remain unconfirmed. He has also denied any involvement in the bomb plot
According to Karadag’s lawyer, his client had moved from China’s Xinjiang province to Turkey in 2004 where he was granted Turkish citizenship and worked as a truck driver. The 28-year-old Uighur Muslim allegedly entered Thailand only four days after the blast and was en route to Malaysia, where he was going to seek a job as a truck driver.
But on Thursday, the Bangkok Post reported,
according to the latest evidence and investigation, authorities suspect he might be the perpetrator of the Erawan shrine blast (…)
Some of the evidence comes from CCTV footage shot in Lumpini Park showing a yellow-shirted man suspected of planting the deadly bomb at the shrine going into a toilet in the park, where he changed his shirt to a grey one. The man seen in the footage leaving the toilet resembles Mr Karadag, the sources said. After leaving the park, he took a public bus to the apartment in Nong Chok [where Karadag was arrested later].
Mr Karadag has a long scar on his arm, while the yellow-shirted suspect seen in the footage had straps around both of his arms, the source added.
What is more, Karadag allegedly confessed:
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