A court in Thailand has handed the death penalty to two men for a 2015 attack at a Bangkok shrine that killed 20 people, the deadliest bombing in the country's history.

The court issued its long-delayed ruling on Thursday, convicting two ethnic Uighur men of premeditated and attempted murder for their role in planting a bomb at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok's commercial heart on August 17, 2015.

“The defendants committed a single act that violated multiple laws. The court therefore imposed the harshest penalty available under the law, the death sentence,” one member of the four-judge panel said.

The deadly blast tore apart the site where worshippers and tourists had gathered, injuring more than 120 people – including several from mainland China and Hong Kong – and leaving the shrine littered with motorbike fragments and singed debris.

Both of the accused, Chinese nationals Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed, will appeal the sentence within a month, a lawyer for one of the men told reporters. The defendants have repeatedly denied the charges.

Following the verdict, Mieraili said: “RIP Thailand’s justice system. I don’t accept any of this. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The case has taken more than 10 years to reach trial, with prosecutors collecting evidence from hundreds of witnesses. It started in a military court in 2016 and moved to a civilian court in 2022.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but security experts suspect it was an act of retaliation against the forced deportation of more than 100 Uighurs from Thailand in the previous month.

Source: www.aljazeera.com