Lt Gen Sriwara said suspects connected to the bombing did not stay in the room, but they came to the room and asked the tenants to hold on to their personal belongings. His whereabouts could not be confirmed.
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No group has said it carried out the attack at the Erawan shrine on 17 August, but Thailand has alleged that a network that includes foreigners was behind the bombing.
Jiang Xulian, 39, from China, confessed to stealing the gemstone, worth 10 million baht or about $280,000 on Friday after an X-ray scan showed a diamond-like object in her large intestine, police said.
Following the discovery of over 30 corpses of Rohingya in jungle camps May 1, Thai authorities arrested suspected human traffickers – including a Thai general – and trafficking boats remained at sea.
Police said he was a Chinese national of Uighur ethnicity who left the country before the attack, only to rescind the word “Uighur” hours later and call on the press to drop the term entirely.
Thai efforts to identify the members of the network believed responsible for the bombing continued Sunday, when police in Bangkok raided an apartment that they suspected was linked to a bombing suspect.
Khalid said the Pakistani suspect is male while one of the local suspects is female and the other, male.
That statement also referred to Ishan being of Uighur ethnicity. Experts say Thailand has been avoiding naming Uighurs for economic and diplomatic reasons as it is wary of riling China.
The ransacking of the consulate was widely seen as a response to the deportation of the Uighurs.
Chinese visitors are a lynchpin of the tourist industry, and Beijing remains one of the increasingly isolated Thai junta’s few global allies.
In the past week, several Turkish and Chinese links to the bombing appeared to strengthen the theory that the attack was to avenge Thailand’s forced repatriation of more than 100 ethnic Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs) to China in July.
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The main suspect – a man wearing a yellow T-shirt who left a rucksack at the shrine moments before the explosion – is still believed to be on the run.
