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 Police raided an apartment in a northern suburb of the capital on
Saturday afternoon and discovered possible bomb-making materials
that could have been used in the Aug. 17 attack in Bangkok's
bustling commercial heart.
Police would not confirm where the suspect was from but said he was
a foreign national and would be charged initially with possession of
illegal explosive materials and held at a military facility.
The bomb tore through the crowded Erawan Shrine, one of the
country's top tourist attractions and close to high-end hotels and
malls, killing 20 people and wounding scores more.
Among the dead were 14 foreigners, including seven from mainland
China and Hong Kong, in an attack the military government said was
intended to be a strike at Thailand's troubled economy.
The suspect "looks like the one we are looking for", said national
police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri.
"They also found a lot of materials which can be used to make
bombs."
The prime suspect in the attack is a young man with shaggy dark hair
dressed in a yellow shirt seen on grainy closed-circuit television
footage dropping off a backpack and casually leaving the scene
before the bomb went off.
Thai television showed a photograph of a handcuffed man in his 20s,
shabbily dressed with a beard and hair shaven short. Reuters could
not immediately verify the authenticity of the image.
Several channels also showed an image of a passport they said was
seized at the apartment where the man was arrested during the raid.
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It appeared to be a Turkish passport, belonging to a man born in
1987. Reuters could not confirm whether or not it belonged to the
suspect, or if it was found by police at the apartment.
Police and military personnel cordoned off the brown-colored
four-floor budget apartment on Saturday from scores of media and
onlookers, and the arrested man could not be seen, a Reuters
photographer said.
Police had made little progress in the investigation, and
authorities had offered a $85,000 reward for information leading to
the arrest of the main suspect.
Officials have had different theories about the identity of the man,
saying he could be foreign, or a Thai man pretending to be foreign.
Police have been criticized for providing contradictory information,
and Reuters reporters on Friday found the authorities had not
checked some CCTV footage taken minutes after the blast, which
featured a man dressed like the chief suspect.
(Additional reporting by Khettiya Jittapong; Writing by Martin
Petty; Editing by Will Waterman)
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