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.