Chinese Uyghurs get death sentence for 2015 shrine bombing

BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — Two Chinese Uyghur men were sentenced to death Thursday for carrying out a 2015 attack on a Bangkok shrine that killed 20 people, a long-awaited verdict in Thailand’s deadliest bombing case.

A Bangkok court convicted Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed of premeditated and attempted murder for their role in planting a bomb at the popular Erawan Shrine in the capital’s commercial heart.

The blast tore apart the site where worshippers and tourists had gathered, wounding more than 100 people and leaving the shrine to the Thai representation of Brahma littered with motorbike fragments and singed debris.

Seven Chinese tourists were among the fatalities when explosives — apparently left in a backpack — detonated.

“The defendants committed a single act that violated multiple laws. The court therefore imposed the harshest penalty available under the law, the death sentence,” one member of the four-judge panel said Thursday as the lengthy verdict was read out.

The defendants — both Chinese nationals who arrived in court in prison garb — were acquitted of charges stemming from a separate bombing at a Bangkok pier.

Following the verdict, Mieraili said: “RIP Thailand’s justice system. I don’t accept any of this. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Choochat Kanpai, the defendants’ lawyer, told reporters they “will appeal the ruling because there are many aspects of the case that the court has not fully considered, including the treatment of the defendants during the proceedings.”