One Important Detail

Back briefly to the July 7th London bombings. Many details still remain to be clarified, but bit-by-bit things are falling into place. The Chemist, for example, turns out to have been wrongly suspected. On the other hand, the suicide issue may well be finally receiving confirmation. The Guardian is running a story which suggests the bombers detonated the bombs themselves by pressing a device similar to a button, and did not use mobile phones as one senior New York police officer suggested. In fact there was quite a flurry of material at the time trying to tell us they were dupes more than fanatics. The Guardian say they have this on confirmation from several separate senior police and counter-terrorism sources, and they do repeat themselves on this, so while nothing here is guaranteed fact it seems they are aware of the disinformation charge and the role of the press in spreading this, and do seem to be trying to say ‘hey guys, this one is for real’. Anyway, judge for yourself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 4:08 pm and is filed under A Fistful Of Euros, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1. Ken Says:
   August 29th, 2005 at 10:16 pm

   Didn’t one of the suicide bombers try to ring his friends before he blew himself up? This despite the fact that they had blown themselves up nearly an hour earlier? Either he bungled his job very badly, and rang in panic, or he thought they’d still be alive.

2. Edward Says:
   August 30th, 2005 at 7:46 am

   “Didn’t one of the suicide bombers try to ring his friends before he blew himself up?”

   Well Ken, I read this report too, and it is puzzling. I think the first thing it emphasises is that we still really don’t “know” anything with any degree of certainty. But….

   “Either he bungled his job very badly, and rang in panic, or he thought they’d still be alive.”

   Probably both of these, and psychologists might call this cognitive dissonance, holding radically divergent opinions under stress. I find it impossible to put myself in the mental state of a would-be bomber, so I don’t have much intuitive insight to offer. Certainly the suggestion is that he backed-out. Maybe he was checking to see if anyone else had.

   The fact of the matter is he then went, boarded a bus, and blew himself up. Following the logic of your argument about time, if the timers were automatic he’d have been blown-up in Macdonalds in Kings Cross at the same time as the rest of them. If he was still alive it was because he was still in control. I think this argument (which I have just understood as I try to explain) clinches it, well this and the manual push-buttons.

   Of course, when he realised they were all dead he was trapped in the nether realm. He didn’t want to go forwards (to blow himself up), but he couldn’t go back (to his friends, those he respected, not after having ‘chickened out). It seems to have been a battle between fear and shame, but you really need a psychologist with experience of working with people involved in sects to explain this.