By Ben Blanchard and Faith Hung / Reuters
Authorities in Taiwan and Bulgaria yesterday denied involvement in the supply chain of thousands of pagers that detonated on Tuesday in Lebanon in a deadly blow to Hezbollah.
Tuesday’s attack, and another on Wednesday involving exploding hand-held radios used by Hezbollah, together killed 37 people and wounded about 3,000 in Lebanon.
How or when the pagers were weaponized and remotely detonated remains a public mystery and the hunt for answers has involved Taiwan, Bulgaria, Norway and Romania.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Security sources said that Israel was responsible for the pager explosions that raised the stakes in a growing conflict between the two sides. Israel has not directly commented on the attacks.
New Taipei City-based Gold Apollo (金阿波羅通信) this week said it did not manufacture the devices used in the attack and Budapest-based BAC Consulting KFT, to which the pagers were traced, has a license to use its brand.
“The components are [mainly] low-end IC and batteries,” Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
When asked whether the parts in the pagers that exploded were made in Taiwan, Kuo said: “I can say with certainty they were not made in Taiwan,” adding that the case is being investigated by judicial authorities.
In response to media queries, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) answered “no” when asked if he had met with the de facto Israeli ambassador to express concern about the case.
“We are asking our missions abroad to raise their security awareness and will exchange relevant information with other countries,” Lin said.
Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) also said that Gold Apollo “and Taiwan did not directly export pagers to Lebanon.”
Bulgaria also became a focal point for investigations on Thursday after local media reported that Sofia-based Norta Global Ltd was involved in selling the pagers.
Bulgaria’s state security agency DANS yesterday said that it had “indisputably established” that no pagers used in the Lebanon attack were imported to, exported from, or made in Bulgaria.
Neither Norta nor its Norwegian owner had traded, sold or bought the pagers within Bulgaria’s jurisdiction, DANS said.
As Taiwanese authorities look into any potential link between its sprawling global tech supply chains and the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon, Gold Apollo president and founder Hsu Ching-kuang (許清光) was questioned by prosecutors late into the night on Thursday then released.
Another person also at the prosecutors’ office was a woman surnamed Wu (吳), a representative connected to BAC, who had set up a company based in Taipei called Apollo Systems.
She did not speak to reporters as she left late on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office said that it had questioned two people as witnesses and was given consent to conduct searches of their firms’ four locations in Taiwan as part of its investigation.
“We’ll seek to determine if there was any possible involvement of these Taiwanese companies as soon as possible, to ensure the safety of the country and its people,” the spokesperson said.
Iran-aligned Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which has not claimed responsibility for the detonations.
The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the conflict in Gaza erupted in October last year.
Additional reporting by AFP
Taiwan and Bulgaria deny links to exploding devices
