BANGKOK BOMBS

DSI hones in on suspects from security camera tapes

BHANRAVEE TANSUBHAPOL

The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) has singled out images of three suspects in the New Year bombings in Bangkok using security camera footage taken at CentralWorld Plaza that police had already analysed. Justice Minister Charnchai Likhitjitta said the DSI spotted two suspicious men and one woman on footage from a security camera.

After sketching one of the men and cross-checking the picture with criminal records, the DSI found he had been charged in a criminal case before but had escaped.

Sketches of the other two suspects will be sent overseas for identification using equipment unavailable in Thailand. He said the tapes the DSI team examined were the same as those previously analysed by the police. He denied the DSI had a secret security camera.

DSI director-general Sunai Manomai-udom said investigators used specialist software to analyse the tapes from CentralWorld's camera.

The DSI would look for more evidence to see how the three suspects were linked to each other and to the explosion in front of CentralWorld, he said.

''We will wait until the evidence is clearer before calling in the suspects, because the agency does not want to bring in the wrong suspects for questioning as the police did, as it will tarnish our reputation,'' Mr Sunai said.

The DSI's inquiry would place importance on circumstantial evidence as it had secured different information from the police, he said.

The DSI has not yet found a link to the 19 suspects whom police earlier brought in for questioning, said Mr Sunai, who was recently appointed chief of the DSI by the military-appointed government.

A source said the DSI is examining pictures of people who stood near the rubbish bin where the bomb was placed, including the three suspects. Investigators would gradually eliminate those who were not relevant to the inquiry, the source said. The faces of the suspects were not clear from the footage.

Ehancement techniques had been applied to develop a composite image which helped link one data image to a man listed in police records.

Pictures of the other two suspects require more sophisticated software programmes in use overseas to build up a composite image as they showed only one side of their faces, the source said.

Bangkok Post
Friday February 02, 2007