Police continue to hunt Odd Phayungwong, a key suspect in the Erawan shrine and Sathon pier bombings, and say they are confident they will soon arrest him.
Mr Odd was allegedly involved in the August bombing attacks but only came to the attention of police in the past few days, said national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda. Police may take some time to track him down while they continue to piece together the investigation jigsaw, he added.
Srivara Ransibrahmanakul, acting assistant police chief, said four police teams had been ordered to track down Mr Odd, who has previously been arrested several times for petty crimes, but could not confirm whether the suspect was still in Thailand.
Police unearthed more clues about the suspect after questioning his mother and close associates, said Pol Lt Gen Srivara. The mother said her son did not have a 13-digit ID number, and relatives last saw him five or six years ago.
Witnesses told police they saw Mr Odd meet Thai female suspect Wanna Suansan at the Maimuna Garden Home apartment in Min Buri, where bomb-making materials were found. She had rented a room there for suspects in the August blasts, police said. Police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said the Foreign Ministry had revoked Ms Wanna's passport.
Mr Odd is also wanted under an arrest warrant in connection with an explosion in Min Buri district last year which killed two people, Pol Lt Gen Srivara said. The suspect was part of the group led by Kasi Ditthanarat, wanted under an arrest warrant linked to deadly blasts at the Samarn Metta Mansion in Nonthaburi's Bang Bua Thong district in 2010.
A family with the last name Phayungwong in Ubon Ratchathani have lodged a complaint with police, saying they are not related to Mr Odd as suggested by some media reports. Tha Phayungwong, 66, said Anong Phayungwong, her late cousin, was incorrectly identified as the mother of Mr Odd, although Anong only had one child -- a daughter.
The blue-shirted blast suspect, identified as Zubair Abdullah, who was caught on security camera footage dropping a bomb into the canal at Sathon pier, is believed to be in hiding near the Thai-Malaysian border, Pol Gen Chakthip said.
Malaysian police previously detained a number of alleged Uighur migrant traffickers, but so far Thai police have not found any links between those suspects and the bombings, he said.
Lawyer Choochart Kanphai, who represents Adem Karadag, 30, who confessed to planting the bomb at the Erawan shrine, told the Bangkok Post his client's real name was Bilal Mohammed. He said Mr Mohammed was a Uighur who was born in Xinjiang's Urumqi in China, and migrated to Istanbul where he lived for 11 years.
He arrived in Bangkok for the first time on Aug 14 after meeting Abdullah Abdulrahman, another suspect in the bombing, in Vietnam, and they travelled on to Bangkok together via Laos.
The lawyer will meet his client on Thursday to ask him again about his motive for the bombing, which he had been reluctant to divulge the last time they met.
"[I think] his confession was unusual... I believe he probably will retract his confession later in court. He confessed now because he is being detained by the military," the lawyer said.