UPDATE 4:25am EDT August 30
From a BBC report, 3:55am EDT Aug 30:
[...]
Police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said the man "is a culprit in the same network" as those behind the blast.
'Personal feud'
But national police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang downplayed any suggestion that the suspect was connected to terrorism.
"He is a foreigner, but it's unlikely he is an international terrorist. It's a personal feud," Mr Somyot told a televised news conference.
"He got angry on behalf of his friends and family members," he added without elaborating.
[...]
****
UPDATE 2:00 AM EDT August 30
For the moment Bangkok Post has the most authoritative report on the captured Bangkok bombings suspect:
Police arrest Erawan bomb suspect (Updated Sunday).
http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/673540/police-arrest-erawan-bomb-suspect
I'm not going to bother to quote the extensive report, which conflicts with other news sources in various details including how the police nabbed the suspect. But this does look like the most informative and authoritative report to be published so far.
A Reuters report filed at 12:07 EDT August 30 adds a few details that can be thrown onto the pile of data bits.
***
From CNN:
"However, he is not the man in a yellow T-shirt and dark-framed glasses who was identified from surveillance video as the chief suspect in the bombing, Prawut said. "The man we have is not the man in the sketch, but we believe he is part of the network which carried out the two bomb incidents," he said."
Well. That explains why the captured suspect looks nothing like the police sketch OR the person in the CCTV footage.
More from the CNN report:
"Prawut initially said the suspect arrested Saturday was a Turkish national. But he subsequently told CNN: "At first we thought he is Turkish. But we just found out two Turkish passports he is holding are all fake.
"We also found many empty fake passports, also various kinds of evidences."
Prawut said investigators hunting for clues had "also found the same type of ball bearings in this man's apartment." [that were packed into the bombs]
High ranking police officers, forensic experts and army personnel were all seen outside the building shortly after news of the arrest broke.
The apartment is in the Nong Jok suburb, an area known to house a large Muslim community."
Thai police have been searching for Turkish nationals who arrived in Thailand in the 15 days before a blast tore through foreign tourists and Thais at the Erawan shrine on August 17, killing 20 people and injuring more than 120 others in an unprecedented attack.
But their breakthrough in the investigation came when residents of a predominantly Muslim district of Bangkok on Saturday reported to police the suspicious activities of a non-Thai speaking man renting five rooms in a seedy, four-storey apartment block.
After more than 100 police surrounded the building they found a man believed to 28 years old in a room with a stack of false passports and bomb making equipment similar to that used in the shrine bombing, including ball bearings, pipes and fuses.
The bearded man with short cropped hair has been charged with possession of bomb making material and is being held in a Thai military base pending further investigation.
Anthony Davis, a respected Bangkok-based security analyst with IHS-Jane's, said last week the Grey Wolves were likely to be behind the bombing because they had both motive and capability, although he did not rule out other possibilities.
"They are violent and operate below the radar," he said.
Mr Davis also said the group had "latched onto in a big way" Uighur Muslims in western China who claim they have suffered years of persecution from Beijing.
Thailand infuriated the Uighur movement in July when the country deported to China 109 Uighur men who had been separated from their wives and children.
Ethnic-Chinese tourists appear to have been targets of the shrine bombers. Mr Davis described the Bangkok attack as potentially the nightmare that has worried security agencies, a link-up between terrorism and organized crime. "
The Grey Wolves as the report explains, are strongly linked to organized crime.
From Tony's analysis it does seem there are a few holes in the Grey Wolves theory, and in particular this:
The [Erawan shrine] bombing also follows a February double bombing just down the street in the popular Siam shopping district - both incidents involving nearly identical bombs and using identical means to put them in place before they detonated.
[...]
Forbes' attempt to portray the "Grey Wolves" as being behind the blasts in Bangkok include several obvious omissions. First, the Siam bombings in February occurred months before the alleged slight the "Grey Wolves" supposedly attacked Bangkok for last week. Uyghurs Thailand detained were extradited to China in July, months after the Siam blasts. Forbes and the "experts" they cite never so much as mention the Siam bombings.
But we'll just have to wait and see.
