Lawyer: Bangkok bomb planted to avenge Uighur deportation

The lawyer for a Uighur man charged with a bombing that killed 130 people in Bangkok has said that his client has denied claims by Thai authorities that the motive was revenge for their clampdown on people smuggling.

Instead, Chuchart Kanpai, the lawyer for Bilal Mohammed -- formerly identified by Thai police as Adem Karadag and then as Bilal Turk -- says the explosion was carried out to avenge injustice faced by the Turkic ethnic group, in particular the deportation of 109 Uighur to China in July.

“He [Mohammed] said that he was ordered to do the bombing and that the attack was connected to the deportation of 109 Uighur to China in July,” Kanpai told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.

“[Abdullah] Abdulrahman, the man who he said had ordered the bombing, told him that the 109 deported back to China had probably been killed after being sent back.”

For months, Thailand has tried to distance the deportation from the bombing, with police refusing to discuss any link between the two, adamant that the explosion was instead revenge for the country's crackdown on people smuggling that followed the discovery of human remains at a trafficking camp on its border in May.

The deported Uighur -- a Muslim Turkic minority from northwest China who claim their cultural and religious rights are curtailed by the Chinese authorities -- were from a group of around 400 held over immigration offenses in holding centers in Thailand at the beginning of 2014, many of whom claim to have Turkish nationality.

In July, 109 -- 85 men and 24 women -- from the group were deported to China, while around 180 were sent to Turkey.

Last month, Kanpai told Anadolu Agency that Mohammed -- a China-born Uighur who claims to have been naturalized as a Turkish citizen -- had said that he had planted the bomb after travelling from China at the behest of an Abdullah Abdulrahman, who he said would help him gain passage to Turkey.

Mohammed has claimed that the first stop on the journey was Vietnam, where Abdulrahman supplied him with a fake Turkish passport and advised him that the best way to travel to Malaysia was via Laos then Thailand -- where border officials were more friendly -- and then onto Malaysia and Istanbul, rather than flying directly to Kuala Lumpur.

That way, the lawyer said, his client was told there was less chance of his false passport being discovered.

Once in Thailand, the lawyer says Abdulrahman -- who remains at large -- sold him the bombing mission and said that if he did it he would be guaranteed passage to Turkey.

Abdulrahman has been identified by Thai police as the man who organized the rental of apartments in a block in Bangkok's eastern suburbs where Mohammed was found during a police raid. 

Along with Mohammed were discovered bomb-making materials and a batch of forged Turkish passports -- the kind frequently used by people smugglers to assist Uighur in their efforts to escape claimed persecution in China and gain sanctuary in countries such as Turkey.

Many Turks welcome Uighur as their own, as they are among a number of Turkic tribes that inhabit a region many Turks call East Turkestan and consider to be part of Central Asia, not China.

When news of the deportation of the Uighur to China emerged, a group of people, among them members of pro-Uighur organizations, ransacked the Thai consulate in Istanbul.

Subsequent TV images of the Uighur sat on a plane blindfolded, handcuffed and under surveillance of guards, provoked uproar among local and foreign rights groups.

The deportation was strongly condemned by the United States government and the United Nations office for Human rights.

In the bombing's aftermath, reporters speculated that a nationalist Turkish organization infuriated by the Thai government’s forcible repatriation of the Uighur might have been responsible, along with other overseas Uighur organizations.

On Tuesday, Kanpai underlined that Mohammed had said “he had no connection to any Uighur network or association, or with the Grey Wolves group.”

He did, however, outline other factors that may have influenced his client's involvement, in particular violence that broke out in Xinjiang's provincial capital of Urumqi in 2009.

"Mohammed said his family was affected, but there was no direct link between these incidents and the Bangkok bombing," said Kanpai.

On July 5, 2009, large protests are reported to have taken place in Urumqi -- the capital of China's Xinjiang province, populated mostly by ethnic Uighur -- in which justice was demanded for two Uighur killed in a brawl with Han Chinese. 

The protest turned into a riot, in which official figures from the Chinese government claim 600 died. The World Uighur Congress, however, has put the figure far higher and disputes the government claims that most of the casualties were Han Chinese.

“My client was in Urumqi in 2009 and he knew about the killings. His relatives, who were living in southern Xinjiang, decided to flee and left Xinjiang to go to live in Istanbul,” claimed Kanpai.

“He said that many people were killed by the Chinese authorities.”

Mohammed is one of two Uighur men awaiting trial for the bombing. The second suspect has been detained at a military facility.

According to Thai police, Yusuf Mieraili, who has no lawyer, has confessed to having assembled and detonated the bomb.

Altogether, 17 arrest warrants have been issued by Thai courts for an array of suspects with suspected Thai, Pakistani and Turkish citizenship.

The bombing at the Erawan Hindu shrine in Bangkok killed 20 people and injured 130 others, many of whom were Chinese tourists who are known to have a particular affiliation with the statue.