after the two men park the car which contains the bomb,they make a call to another man waiting by a booth, who then calls the police. he then gives a few details to the woman at the police station as to where the bomb is set. why does he do this? i was thinking it would be either to confuse or spook the police officers, or maybe he'd felt sorry for the things he'd participated in and wanted to help?
shareIt was common during The Troubles for terrorists to call in the location of bombs to add to the panic. Hence the use of the code word.
shareIt was common to do so, it introduced an element of mass hysteria as previously mentioned, and the supposed reason behind all nationalist bombings was to destabilise the North of Ireland to the extent that it would be ungovernable by the British, who would relinquish it, and give it up as worthless.
To do so, they bombed economic and political targets.
Or at least that was the original logic.
He rang to give them a false location of the bomb. The police then blocked off the wrong end of the street and effectively herded the crowd into the line of fire.
Please don't respond to questions like this if you have no idea what you're talking about. None of these responses are accurate. The Omagh bomb (like most IRA bombs-- even thought this was an RIRA bomb, an altogether different proposition) was called in so that the police would remove civilians from the area. The purpose of the bomb was to cause infrastructure damage and attack establishments of the British occupying forces, not to inflict civilian casualties. Of course, many civilian casualties were inflicted through carelessness.
And no, he is not calling in to give false information so that the people are cordoned off into the explosion area. There was information lost in translation and the police mistakenly herded the people toward the bomb. But this was due to carelessness/miscommunication and was not purposeful.
Why would you answer this question without some semblance of an idea of what you're talking about?
It has been a widely repeated thoughout the years that the police were intentionally given an inaccurate location of the bomb to trick them into directing people toward it. You are the only person I have ever come across who disputes that, compared to many many more who have reported deliberate misdirection to the police.
To claim that the IRA wanted to avoid civilian casualties would definitely be a first.