Bangkok bomber claims did it in effort to see family

Cold blooded killer, or victim of persecution who left a bomb at a shrine in a desperate effort to join his family overseas?

The lawyer for a Uighur Muslim man accused of planting a bomb that killed 20 people in central Bangkok on Aug. 17 says his client has now admitted to carrying out the attack, but only did so at the behest of another suspect in a desperate attempt to join family members he says are based in Istanbul.

On Friday, the Bangkok Post reported lawyer Choochart Khanpai as saying a man identified as Abdullah Abdulrahman had ordered his client Bilal Mohammed to plant the bomb-laden rucksack at the Bangkok shrine Aug. 16. 

Mohammed confessed to the bombing in September, while an arrest warrant -- the 10th in the investigation -- was issued by Thai authorities for Abdulrahman on Sept. 7 on suspicion of people smuggling and being the mastermind of the operation.

But while Mohammed -- who Thai prosecutors refer to as Adem Karadag -- has always claimed that he was on his way to Malaysia to gain employment, the Post reported the lawyer as saying Thursday that he was in fact seeking to travel to Turkey.

Mohammed has said he has family in Istanbul, and has claimed to be a Turkish citizen. More recently, however, he has admitted to being Uighur from China's Xinjiang region, but still claims his elder brother and younger sister are in Turkey.

The Uighur are a Muslim Turkic minority from northwestern China who claim their cultural and religious rights are curtailed by the Chinese authorities. Thousands have fled with the aid of people smugglers, some to settle in Turkey.

On Thursday, Mohammed told his lawyer that he travelled from China -- but refused to reveal his hometown saying he feared Chinese authorities could intimidate his friends and relatives -- to Vietnam.

There, he said he had met Abdulrahman who had supplied him with the fake Turkish passport that police found him with Aug. 29 in an apartment containing bomb-making materials and hundreds of other fake Turkish passports.

Choochart said his client "had" wanted to take a direct flight from China to Malaysia -- from where he would fly on to Istanbul -- but was talked out of it by Abdulrahman as "a fake passport could be spotted easier there than in Vietnam”.

Instead, his client said he was told his best shot was to travel to Laos, from where he could travel south through Thailand into Malaysia.

On arriving in Laos, Choochert has said his client "paid $600 for passing each border point” at both immigration points, Abdulrahman appearing familiar with the officers and joking and smiling with them. 

In Thailand, Mohammed and Abdulrahman shared the apartment building, according to the lawyer -- Abdulrahman changing money for him, buying him food, and assuring him that many migrants had stayed in his room before all had successfully made their way to Malaysia. 

And there, the lawyer said Mohammed was told that if he carried out the mission, Abdulrahman would then contact people in Malaysia to seek his passage to Turkey.

Khanpai said that despite Mohammed's admission to police that he had carried out the attack, it was only when his client saw pictures from the blast scene that he felt remorse upon realizing exactly what he had done.

The Aug. 17 explosion killed 20 people and injured another 130.  

Khanpai has said that Mohammed is aware his offence could carry the death penalty, but feels that if he pleads guilty his punishment will be eased.

On asking Abdulrahman why the shrine was the intended target, Mohammed has said he got no reply.

Thai Police Chief Somyot Poompanmoung told reporters Sept. 28 that the primary motivation for the bombing was still thought to be a crackdown on trafficking by the government earlier this year that disrupted a network used to ferry Uighur from China to Turkey via Thailand.

The deportation to China of 109 Uighur in July saw families separated, husbands taken away from wives and fathers and mothers from children.

As a chorus of protests by international organizations and foreign governments against Thailand’s decision to send the group to Beijing grew, a further group of eight women and children were also sent to Turkey.

The reaction to the deportation was particularly strong in Turkey, where a group of pro-Uighur people vandalized the Thai consulate in Istanbul on July 9.

*Anadolu Agency correspondent Satuk Bugra Kutlugun contributed to this story from Ankara.