The Bangkok South Criminal Court will deliver its verdict tomorrow (11 June) in the Erawan Shrine bombing at Ratchaprasong intersection.
Adem Karadag and Mieraili Yusufu, two ethnic Uyghur defendants, are facing judgment. The ruling will therefore close one of the longest and most closely watched criminal cases in recent Thai history. This was an attack that killed 20 people and shocked the country and the world.
What happened on 17 August 2015
The bombing took place at around 6.55pm on the evening of 17 August 2015. An explosion ripped through the Erawan Shrine in front of the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel. This location is in the heart of one of Bangkok’s busiest shopping and tourist districts.
CCTV footage captured a man in a yellow shirt placing a bag, believed to contain the device, on a bench inside the shrine compound. Moments later, the explosion was triggered. Police later determined that the device contained roughly 3 kilogrammes of TNT.
The blast killed 20 people. Six of the victims were Thai and 14 were foreign nationals. These included five Chinese, five Malaysians, two from Hong Kong, one Indonesian, and one Singaporean. Moreover, more than 120 others were injured. A second device exploded the following day at Sathorn Pier, although it caused no casualties.
Arrests and the Uyghur connection
Just under two weeks after the bombing, police arrested Adem Karadag, a Uyghur national, at an apartment in the Nong Chok area of Bangkok on 29 August 2015. A second suspect, Mieraili Yusufu, was detained soon after. He was one of more than 17 people implicated in the case. Prosecutors charged the two with causing an explosion resulting in deaths.
A motive quickly emerged. The attack came only weeks after Thai authorities forcibly returned nearly 100 Uyghur Muslims to China. Thai authorities have long believed the bombing was an act of revenge over that deportation.
Nearly 11 years of legal limbo
The case became one of the most drawn-out prosecutions in living memory. The trial began in the military court system, where both defendants reversed their initial confessions and pleaded not guilty in February 2016.
However, proceedings then stalled when police arrested the English-Uyghur interpreter assisting the defence on drug charges. This forced the court to source a new interpreter through the Chinese embassy.
The case was eventually transferred from the military court to the Bangkok South Criminal Court in late 2019. The defendants maintained their not guilty pleas and signaled their intent to fight the charges.
The pace barely picked up. Seven years in, the court had heard only 40 of more than 400 listed witnesses. Meanwhile, an independent observer who attended the hearings noted that the interpreter provided through the Chinese embassy had mistranslated more than a hundred terms. Proceedings paused again in late 2022 after Adem’s lawyer broke his leg in an accident. The trial resumed once more after that.
The case also raised humanitarian concerns along the way. Adem appeared in court in a wheelchair, having lost significant weight and suffered deteriorating health. He told the court that the temporary detention facility at Lak Si did not provide halal meals in line with his Islamic faith.
The third defendant in the case, Wanna Suansan, was acquitted on 7 November 2024. The court ruled that no fingerprints, DNA evidence, financial transactions, or phone records linked her to the suspects. Furthermore, she had been abroad since before the bombing took place.
Tomorrow’s verdict therefore marks a turning point that the families of the 20 victims, the more than 100 wounded, and observers in Thailand and abroad have waited nearly 11 years to hear. After more than a decade of delays, mistranslations, and procedural setbacks, the question of who will be held accountable for one of the deadliest attacks in modern Thai history is finally set to be answered.
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