Authorities in Thailand now say that neither of the two people in custody in connection with last month's deadly bombing of a religious shrine in the capital is the main suspect in the attack.
Police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said that neither of the suspects — identified as Adem Karadag and Yusufu Mieraili — appears to be the man seen in video surveillance footage wearing a yellow t-shirt and leaving a backpack at the Erawan shrine moments before the explosion that killed 20 people and wounded more than 100 others.
The revelation comes less than a week after the country's national police chief, Somyot Poompanmoung, called a news conference to announce that he would divide reward money meant to garner information from the public among his own officers for having solving the case.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power in a coup last year, also said earlier this week that police had nabbed the "main suspect" in the attack.
As we reported a week ago, officials said they found bomb-making materials in Karadag's apartment, along with dozens of fake Turkish passports, although his nationality has yet to be made clear.
However, The Bangkok Post reports that when police tested Karadag's DNA, the failed to get a match for samples taken from a taxi, a banknote and shreds of a backpack recovered at the shrine that are believed to be connected to the man in the surveillance video.
Neither was there a DNA match for Mieraili, a 25-year-old man arrested on Sept 1.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
