Eleven Years, Twenty Dead: A Thai Court Sends Two Men to the Gallows for the Erawan Shrine Bombing. They Say They’ll Appeal.

On June 11, 2026, after a trial that ran nearly eleven years, Thailand’s South Bangkok Criminal Court convicted two ethnic Uighur men of premeditated murder and sentenced them to death for the August 17, 2015 bombing of the Erawan Shrine — the blast in the heart of Bangkok’s shopping district that killed 20 people and wounded more than 120. A four-judge panel found Bilal Mohammed — the man Thai police say left a backpack packed with explosives under a bench, known also by the alias Adem Karadag — and Yusufu Mieraili, accused of detonating it by phone, guilty of jointly carrying out the attack.

The court found “no grounds for mitigation in the charge of jointly committing premeditated murder” and imposed the harshest penalty available under Thai law. Both men, Chinese nationals from the Uighur Muslim minority of Xinjiang, have denied every charge since their 2015 arrests. As the sentence was read, Mieraili told the court: “RIP Thailand’s justice system. I don’t accept any of this.”

A defense lawyer said the men will appeal within a month — the first step in a Thai appeals process that can run for years. The verdict closes one chapter of a case shadowed from the start by geopolitics: the bombing came just weeks after Thailand forcibly deported scores of Uighurs to China, and many Thai investigators long believed the attack was revenge for it.

• 20 killed — in the August 17, 2015 Erawan Shrine blast — 14 foreign nationals and six Thais — with more than 120 wounded · Source: Al Jazeera, Royal Thai Police
• ~11 years — from attack to verdict — a trial that began in a military court in 2016 and moved to a civilian court in 2022 · Source: Al Jazeera, Nation Thailand
• 400+ witnesses — and roughly 10,000 pages of testimony examined before the four-judge panel ruled · Source: AP, Al Jazeera
• 2 death sentences — for Bilal Mohammed (alias Adem Karadag) and Yusufu Mieraili; both deny the charges and will appeal within a month · Source: Al Jazeera, Nation Thailand

The judgment came down at the South Bangkok Criminal Court before a four-judge panel. The court convicted both defendants of premeditated and attempted murder for the bomb planted at the Erawan Shrine, near the Ratchaprasong intersection, on the evening of August 17, 2015. “The defendants committed a single act that violated multiple laws,” the court ruled, according to Al Jazeera. “The court therefore imposed the harshest penalty available under the law, the death sentence.” Each man was also fined 1,000 baht for carrying a weapon in public.

Thai prosecutors had built the case around CCTV footage, fingerprints, and forensic evidence. Police allege Bilal Mohammed — the man captured on security cameras in a yellow T-shirt, slipping a dark backpack under a bench at the shrine and walking away while looking at his phone — left the device, and that Yusufu Mierailidetonated it minutes later. The court found “no grounds for mitigation” on the murder charge. A defense lawyer, Choochat Kanpai, told reporters the men would appeal within a month.

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At about 6:55 p.m. on August 17, 2015, a pipe bomb hidden under a bench tore through the Erawan Shrine, a Hindu-Brahman landmark in front of the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel that draws a steady crowd of worshippers and tourists at one of the city’s busiest intersections. The Royal Thai Police said roughly three kilograms of TNT had been stuffed into the pipe. Twenty people were killed — six Thais and 14 foreign nationals, among them visitors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia — and more than 120 were wounded. It was the deadliest bombing in Bangkok’s modern history.

The next afternoon, a second device was thrown from a bridge toward the busy Sathorn pier near the Saphan Taksin station; it landed in the Chao Phraya River and exploded without casualties. Investigators concluded the two attacks were the work of the same network. A Thai military court ultimately issued arrest warrants for 17 people; only a handful were ever apprehended, and just two stood in the dock for the verdict.

“RIP Thailand's justice system. I don't accept any of this.”

Yusufu Mieraili, defendant, as the death sentence was read · June 11, 2026

Few terrorism cases anywhere have crawled as slowly as this one. The trial opened in 2016 in a military court — the era when Thailand was under junta rule following the 2014 coup, and explosives charges fell under military jurisdiction. It moved to the civilian South Bangkok Criminal Court in 2022 once such cases were returned to civilian courts, which forced witness examination to restart. Along the way the COVID-19 pandemic, the sheer scale of the evidence, and a chronic shortage of qualified interpreters stalled proceedings repeatedly.

The language problem alone consumed years. The defendants speak Uighur, requiring a chain of translation through English and Thai. Thai authorities said they could not find a suitable Uighur-speaking interpreter; the defendants, in turn, rejected translators offered by the Chinese embassy. As Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng put it, “It’s a case that has dragged on for a decade.” In the end the court reviewed roughly 10,000 pages of testimony from more than 400 prosecution witnesses and over 45 defense witnesses. A Thai woman, Wanna Suansan, accused of providing accommodation to the network, was acquitted in an earlier ruling.

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From the night of the blast, investigators and analysts pointed in one direction. Just weeks earlier, in July 2015, Thailand had forcibly returned scores of Uighur Muslims — roughly 109 men, by most accounts — to China, where rights groups warned they faced persecution under Beijing’s Xinjiang policies. The deportations drew furious protests in Turkey and across the Uighur diaspora. Many Thai officials came to believe the Erawan bombing was an act of revenge for that repatriation, carried out by Uighur militants or sympathizers; others have argued the network was tied to a human-smuggling operation Thai authorities had disrupted. The court’s verdict turned on the men’s individual conduct, not on any single motive theory.

The geopolitics never fully receded. Thailand again drew international condemnation in early 2025 when it deported another group of Uighur detainees to China, and the Erawan case has remained a flashpoint for advocates who say Bangkok has repeatedly bowed to pressure from Beijing. The defense, for its part, has long disputed the integrity of the evidence: Human Rights Watch in 2016 called for an investigation into allegations that Bilal Mohammed’s confession was extracted under torture — a claim Thai authorities denied. None of it moved the panel, which found the prosecution’s forensic case decisive.

A death sentence in Thailand is rarely the end of the road. The country retains capital punishment but carries out executions infrequently — by lethal injection, and only after appeals are exhausted; its last executions were in 2018. Both men have indicated they will appeal to the Appeal Court and, if needed, the Supreme Court, a process that in a case this complex could itself stretch for years. A royal pardon or commutation to life imprisonment is also possible at the end of the chain. In other words, the gallows the headlines invoke are, for now, a legal status rather than an imminent date.

For the victims’ families — scattered across at least six countries — the verdict is the first formal finding of responsibility in nearly eleven years. For the 15 named suspects who were never caught, the case remains open. And for the broader question of why a Hindu shrine in central Bangkok became the site of the deadliest bombing in the city’s history, the court answered who and how, while the why — revenge for the Uighur deportations, or something else — stays where it has been since 2015: strongly suspected, never fully proven in open court.

The immediate next step is procedural: the defense has roughly a month to file its appeal, after which the case will climb back through Thailand’s courts. Expect the same fault lines to resurface — the reliability of the confessions and forensic chain, the years of interpreter disputes, and the question of whether two men can be held fully responsible for a network the state itself said numbered at least 17. Rights groups will keep watching how Thailand handles a case so entangled with its relationship to Beijing and with the Uighurs it has repeatedly sent back.

We are reporting the South Bangkok Criminal Court’s findings as findings: under Thai law these are convictions, not yet final, and the defendants retain the right to appeal. We will update this page as the appeal proceeds and as any further detail on the verdict, the evidence, or the still-open suspect list emerges.

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Last updated June 11, 2026