Somyot said the Bangkok bomb and the ransacking of the Thai consulate in Istanbul – which occurred the day after the deportation – were "for the same reason: illegal human migration, with an origin here and destination Turkey".
A team of senior Thai police was heading for Malaysia after reports that three suspects arrested by Malaysian police may have been linked with the Bangkok bombing.
"I said, the bombing at Ratchaprasong Intersection was a outcome of Thai authorities destroying a Uighur human trafficking network, which had been going on for a long time", he said today.
The August 17 bombing killed 20, the majority ethnic Chinese tourists including two Hongkongers, raising the possibility of a link to militants or supporters of the Uygurs, who say they face heavy persecution in China.
On Tuesday, Somyot also elaborated on a possible motive, suggesting that in addition to being angry that the human trafficking network was broken up, the perpetrators were upset at the repatriation.
This is the first time that the Thai authorities have directly linked the bomb attack with the deportation of trafficked Uighur.
Thai authorities have avoided calling the bombing an act of terrorism, which they fear would harm Thailand's image as a tourist destination.
Royal Thai Police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang today walked back statements he made yesterday attributing the attack to anger over Thailand's deportation of 109 Uighurs under pressure from Beijing.
Thailand's junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha later questioned why Uighurs would carry out an attack yet not claim it.
The incident is the third this month in which a Turkish official has highlighted what appears to be an apparent betrayal of diplomatic protocol by Thailand's military government.
"There is no record of the suspect having entered Turkey", the [senior Turkish government] official said in an email on condition of anonymity in line with office policy.
On Monday, police said a key suspect in the bombing traveled with a Chinese passport and had fled to Turkey.
Hidden by multiple layers of deniability, official obfuscation, and patchy police work, the local masterminds likely acted in coordination with foreign criminals with prior links to wayward security officials to execute the politically sensitive attack, the same sources said.
"He departed Dhaka on August 30 for Delhi by Jet Airways", Prawut said.
Bilgiç underlined Tuesday that Turkey could only investigate a suspect after receiving information from the country concerned.
That determination reached near comical proportions on Saturday, when a warrant for a key suspect named as Abudusataer Abudureheman, or "Ishan", was issued.
Many Uighurs say they are discriminated against by the Chinese government. The theory is that a hybrid criminal-terror group staged the attack in revenge for their Turkic brethren's mistreatment in Thai custody.
Source: Investigation on Bangkok Bombing Turns to Human Traffickers in China and Turkey
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