This is my piece from Bangkok in this morning's Times. It appears in the print and iPad edition, but not online.
21 Aug 2015
The Times
Richard Lloyd Parry
Thai police hunt man named ‘Mohamad Museyin’
Thai authorities investigating the Bangkok bombing are focusing on a foreign man with a Muslim name, but have said that the attack is not linked to international terrorism, The Times has learnt.
Two witnesses who believe that they met the only suspect in the attack said that investigators had shown them the passport of a man named Mohamad Museyin. The man pictured within, they said, resembled the suspect seen in security camera footage and a police drawing of the suspect.
The witnesses, both motorbike taxi drivers, told police after the bombing that they had given lifts to the suspect, a foreigner — but, in an indication of what appears to be an increasingly confused and unfocused investigation, neither driver has been interviewed comprehensively since.
On Tuesday morning, 11 hours after the blast at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok, police began interviewing motorcycle taxi drivers across the city, showing them images from security cameras. The suspect is a young, shaggy-haired man wearing a yellow T-shirt who left a rucksack at the point where the bomb exploded a few minutes later, killing 20 people.
“When the police showed me the pictures, I recognised him immediately,” Nikhom Tantula, one of the two witnesses, said. “I said: ‘I’m 100 per cent sure’. They asked me some questions, but not many. It’s strange.” Four days after the bombing, the Thai authorities have a face for the suspect but, publicly at least, they have not announced a name, a nationality or a clear motive for the attack.
Officials of the junta have said that they believe the suspect is a foreigner, but that he is not connected to international terrorism — although the basis for this belief is not clear.
“Security agencies have collaborated with intelligence agencies from allied countries and have come to the same preliminary conclusion: that the incident is unlikely to be linked to international terrorism,” said Colonel Winthai Suvaree, a spokesman for the junta. When pressed later, however, he admitted that a connection could not be ruled out. Mr Nikhom says that he gave
a lift to someone resembling the suspect on eight consecutive days in February, always picking him up from the same spot, a taxi rank off Sathorn Road, at 5.30am.
“He always ran up in such a hurry, saying, ‘quickly!’” he said. “I’d be doing 80km/h, and he’d want me to go faster. During the journey, he would be on the phone all the time, taking calls and speaking in English, although I didn’t understand what he was saying.”
The man always asked to be taken to a hotel close to Asoke Hospital in central Bangkok — although the police who interviewed Mr Nikhom did not ask for this information. On Wednesday, immigration officials showed him a copy of a passport in the name of Mohamad Museyin. “His hair was different, but I’m pretty sure that it was the same man,” Mr Nikhom said.
Neither Mr Nikhom, nor Witthaya Chasiriwongsawang, the other driver who believes he transported the suspect in the days before the blast, was able to see the nationality of the passport.
General Prawut Thawornsiri, the national police spokesman, did not respond to requests for comment on the information provided by Mr Nikhom.
In remarks to Thai reporters, he said: “This was a network. We think they would have needed at least ten people.”
Two other men seen in CCTV footage and initially tagged by police as potential suspects have since been cleared. One was an innocent Chinese tourist; the other, his Thai guide.