Not sure why everyone is still debating who's to blame. The Prime Minister told us last night it's all Thaksin's fault because he disagreed with the referendum result. Don't you guys understand? Everything that goes wrong or is wrong in Thailand is always the fault of those damn Shinawatras
Where did I say anything about red shirts? The only colour I alluded to in my post was 'yellow'. (For the record: I have massive disdain for both colours)
My 'nonsense' point was regarding your statement that these bombings may well be associated to some kind of 'mafia'. And that my dear Moses, is just nonsense.
Well, if too much time goes by it will all end up like the 9-1-1 conspiracy theories and someone will blame the government for staging it to achieve greater gains...such as what's being tossed about in Istanbul and Ankara with the latest Coup attempt in Turkey. The current government is in a unique position to seize relevant CCTV footage and to round up whatever suspects they please for intensive questioning. What's the delay?
Surfcrest
I assume that there weren't enough young Burmese fishermen around the areas where the bombs were detonated.
arsenal (August 13th, 2016)
"The current government is in a unique position to seize relevant CCTV footage and to round up whatever suspects they please for intensive questioning. What's the delay?"
I know the centre of Hua Hin very well - the bomb locations appear to have been chosen to minimise the likelihood of CCTV coverage.
That said, I don't readily credit the government claims that it's nothing to do with the Islamic separatists. The other anti government elements in the country are broadly on the same side as the bar girls, so it seems unlikely that they would terrorise their own..
Surfcrest, I wouldn't jump on that scenario too quickly. The Bintabat 'entertainment zone' is in a very old part of Hua Hin town (thus it's funkiness) and I rather doubt there would be very many CCTV cameras. I've never seen any myself, though that is not a particularly great handle to hold onto.
The better possibility would be private cell phone cameras, but I'd make a reasonable guess those filmings would more often than not be after the fact, not during.
Anyway, the Thai police are essentialy useless when it comes to a professional gathering of evidence western-style. They are much better at stopping Thai people (plus the odd farang) driving down the road in order to steal 100 or 200 baht from them ... no matter whether the Thai folks are guilty of doing anything illegal at all. They are extremely proficient in that area of police work.
Not to mention, why would they go all the way down south to places like Trang? If it was a militant faction of the red shirts, wouldn't they have stuck with Bangkok, like they normally do?
Plus from what I know, the militant factions within the red shirts could care less about affecting the tourism industry. It's simply not in their game plan really at all. They're far more interested in disrupting government, not tourism.
Latest reports say the SIM cards used on the phones that triggered the blasts were registered in Malaysia..
When I think back to August of last year, when they were investigating the bombings at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, where 20 people died and 125 were injured...they got a description of the suspects and then they reviewed the footage around the perimeter of the crime until the found a match. Then they simply look at the direction they are coming from , going to and find more footage that takes them back to how they traveled to the crime. That's not to say they got the right people for that crime or not.
In Canada, for example, the process for the police of getting CCTV footage gets slowed down by warrants and judges and bureaucracy and quite often that footage has expired before it can be obtained. I would think the situation to be quite a bit easier for the Thai authorities and the extra power they would have, knowing the government has a very keen interest or may even be directly involved with the Thai police.
They tied the suspects of the Erawan Shrine bombings to the deportation of Uyghur people back to China. Whether they got they got it right in that case...I would expect a similar investigation at all sites until they find someone and link that person back to the others.
I think I have a lot more confidence in this government to figure this one out and bring someone(s) to justice inevitably, more so than some of the democratically elected governments in the past.
Surfcrest
francois (August 14th, 2016)