The Mystery Continues

[Guest BKKvisitor]

BANGKOK, Thailand -- This Buddhist-majority nation is gripped with suspense over an unsolved, bloody New Year's Eve terrorist attack in Bangkok.

 

Who planted nine bombs in the capital's streets during public count-down celebrations, killing three people and injuring 30 others in neon-lit darkness?

 

Consider the clues and characters:

 

Immediately after synchronized bombs exploded in scattered urban areas during New Year's Eve, Thailand's unelected military regime insisted Islamist insurgents were not involved.

 

Synchronized bomb attacks in urban areas, however, have been an impressively successful tactic for ethnic Malay-Thai rebels fighting for independence in the south.

 

Police however pointed at two men, filmed by closed-circuit security cameras, wandering Bangkok's Seacon Square shopping mall while lugging a shopping bag, alongside other customers near one New Year's Eve bomb site.

 

Grainy, poorly focused video did not reveal much about the suspects.

 

But two nervous Thai men, Pradya Prichavej and Yutapong Kitisriworapan, soon came forward and publicly announced they were the people in the mall's video.

 

The men, in their thirties and sporting shoulder-length hair, insisted they were innocent and had been shopping together, unaware their presence coincided with the New Year's Eve assault.

 

Anxious police busted the men for alleged terrorism, and began interrogating them.

 

Thai media, meanwhile, appeared to believe the alibi of the "look-alike pair," and reported how the two close friends were languishing behind bars, in legal limbo.

 

The Justice Ministry, unimpressed by the police investigation, became concerned that the two were jailed while merely trying to clear their names.

 

The ministry tried to convince police to release the two, and offered the inmates access to legal aid.

 

Police eventually freed them on Monday (April 2), but warned that the men were not presumed innocent -- even if they could not be found guilty.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00114.htm