A Thai court on Thursday sentenced two Chinese Uyghur men to death for the 2015 bombing of Bangkok’s Erawan shrine, an attack that killed 20 people and injured more than 120 in the deadliest terrorist incident the kingdom has ever witnessed. Delivering its verdict after an 11-year legal process marred by delays and allegations of investigative misconduct, the Bangkok South Criminal Court convicted Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed of premeditated and attempted murder, imposing the maximum penalty under Thai law. “The defendants committed a single act that violated multiple laws. The court therefore imposed the harshest penalty available,” a judge on the four-member panel declared.

The blast, which tore through the Hindu shrine in the capital’s commercial heart on the evening of 17 August 2015, struck a site thronged with tourists and worshippers. The bomb left the temple grounds strewn with body parts and motorcycle fragments, sending shock waves through a nation largely unaccustomed to mass-casualty terrorism. Viewed from Beijing, the attack highlighted the regional spill over of ethnic unrest from China’s Xinjiang province, home to the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority to which the two men belong. Chinese authorities have long pointed to the Bangkok bombing as evidence that Uyghur separatism exports violence beyond its borders, a narrative that resonates in some Southeast Asian security circles.

Yet the verdict has not silenced sceptics. Flaws in the initial police investigation, including allegations that evidence was mishandled and that the men’s confessions were extracted under duress, have dogged the case for over a decade. International observers, including human rights monitors in London and Washington, have raised concerns about the transparency of the trial, noting that the two defendants pleaded not guilty and that Bilal Mohammed shouted after the ruling: “RIP Thailand’s justice system. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Analysts in Bangkok acknowledge that the case remains politically sensitive, given Thailand’s delicate diplomatic balancing act between Beijing and Western capitals, and the pervasive influence of the military establishment on the judiciary.

The two men, arrested shortly after the bombing, have said they will appeal, a process that could extend the legal saga for years. The appeal will likely focus on claims of a flawed investigation and the alleged failure to identify other suspects, including a man in a yellow T-shirt captured on CCTV placing a backpack at the shrine moments before the explosion. For the families of the victims—who included citizens of China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore—the verdict offers a measure of accountability, yet the wider question of who ultimately directed the attack remains unanswered. As Thailand’s courts grapple with this landmark appeal, the case will continue to test the resilience of a justice system under intense domestic and international scrutiny.