A Thai military court has indicted two men accused of carrying out a Bangkok bomb attack that killed 20 people including 14 foreigners, making it the deadliest such incident in Thai history. A lawyer for one of the men said a Bangkok military court brought ten charges against the pair on Tuesday, including premeditated murder, illegal possession of weapons and murder for the bombing in August. "The court has accepted the ten charges that prosecutors formally brought against the two men," said lawyer Schoochart Kanpai.
The two were named as Bilal Mohammad and Mierali Yusufu. Documents sent by prosecutors to the court said both men were Chinese nationals from the Uighur minority. The attack at the Erawan Shrine, a major landmark in the heart of Bangkok, injured more than 120 people.
Thai police have said that the blast was revenge for a crackdown on human trafficking. They ruled out any link to the repatriation of 109 Muslim Uighur people to China in July. The Uighur are a Turkic-language speaking group that calls China's western Xinjian region home. Some Turks see themselves as sharing cultural and religious bond with their Uighur "brothers". The Uighur issue is sensitive for the Thai government and any link between the bomb and the deportation of people at China's behest could expose it to censure that its foreign policy led to the bomb attack.