After 15 months of extremely iffy police work and very interesting prosecution strategy, the two button men of the Erawan Shrine atrocity got their destined opportunity to turn their trial into political theatre.
Their aim, like virtually all terrorists in the modern era, is to make it a farce. So far, they are getting help.
Yusufu Mieraili (Mir Ali), 27, and Bilal Mohammed aka Adem Karadag, 31, are on trial for transporting the bomb to the shrine, and setting it off. The charges are more exacting, but that's the bottom line.
The Uighurs know they aren't going to walk away, so disruption has no actual downside for the two accused. They have grown from tiny minnows to self-important big fish, and last week's decision by Military Court judges put them there.
It's all about the interpreter.
As foreigners, the Uighurs are legally entitled to an interpreter at state expense. The military judges considered using a Mandarin-speaking Thai, or taking up the offer by the World Uighur Congress to supply a translator. Then the Chinese embassy in Bangkok offered to fly in a pair of trusted Chinese linguists who speak English and Uighur. Emphasis apparently on "trusted" because China now is directly involved in the trial. "The court thinks these two interpreters are appropriate," one of the judges announced.
And that's when we learned that the accused man Mieraili actually speaks pretty good English himself. Said he, "I don't need an interpreter from China because China does not respect Uighurs."
So that now becomes the central issue, where the accused refuse to accept any statement from their interpreter, where the trial is supposed to be about their part in murdering 20 people, almost all foreigners, and wounding another 120, many of whom, with their families, will never live a normal life.
This is the downstream effect of a poisoned investigation. The junta and cooperating detectives proceeded to a predetermined conclusion with scapegoat defendants. Messrs Mieraili and Mohammed should be murderous, atrocious asterisks in the case, but the minnows have grown into central characters.
Even the motive the prosecutors and police ascribe to the terrorists fails to hold up. Planning for the bombing began long before the government's crackdown on human smuggling. The only woman known to be involved, Wanna Suansan of Trang province received US$40,000 (about 1.4 million baht) or more from abroad to facilitate the plot. But when she disappeared in Turkey, authorities made no attempt to find her.
There is an accused mastermind, and like Ms Wanna, police have photos and the passport of Abudureheman Abudusataer. The Xinjiang resident left the day before the bombing, flying to Malaysia and then Bangladesh. Police said his trail ended there -- they cited a possible identity change -- so what else could they do?
If Ms Wanna and Mr Abudureheman and 13 other known suspects were in the dock or at least the subject of Interpol Red Notices, the two minnows, murderous as they were, would be shown to scale.
Why weren't they detained or pursued? By huge coincidence, the police commander of Region 3 (the Northeast) gave the game away last week. Speaking of an entirely different case (the murder of Australian Dennis Oake) Pol Lt Gen Tawitchat Palasak publicly worried about the terrible effect of solving the crime and bringing the accused to trial. He said this: "This isn't good for the country's image."
The junta dreads that solving a crime will cause a tourist or two to become fearful and cancel. From the beginning, the Erawan shrine bombing was not to be terrorism. It is quite enough to catch the actual bomber, the big fish don't matter.
Not to put a fine point on it or to provide any defence for terrorism, but the Uighur people have valid grievances.
Han rulers in Beijing have embarked on a Tibet-like campaign to turn Xinjiang wholly Chinese. Much more obnoxious is China's actions against the majority-Sufi Muslims, ranging from laws against following Ramadan fasting to banning the "primitive" Uighur language from schools.
The extremists in Xinjiang, and their brothers who have fled to free-speech nations -- "exiled East Turkistan president" Ahmatjan Osman rails against China from Toronto -- believe in violence and terrorism. They believe in using it far beyond their borders, and against innocents with no connection to any side in the ultimately stupid claims for independence and separation.
Authorities have provided the supremely unimportant killers Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed with a political platform they certainly don't deserve.
