Taiwanese and Bulgarian authorities on Friday denied any role in the supply chain of thousands of pagers that went off in Lebanon on Tuesday, dealing a fatal blow to Hezbollah.
The attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, which involved Hezbollah-used hand-held radios detonating, resulted in 37 fatalities and approximately 3,000 injuries throughout Lebanon.
The public remains curious about how and when the pagers were turned into weapons and remotely detonated. Taiwan, Bulgaria, Norway, and Romania are all involved in the investigation.
The pager blasts that increased the stakes in an ongoing war between the two sides were carried out, according to security officials, by Israel. Israel has refrained from commenting on the attacks explicitly.
This week, Taiwan-based Gold Apollo announced it did not produce the devices used in the attack. The pagers were tracked to BAC, a Budapest-based company that had a license to use Gold Apollo’s name.
According to Taiwan’s Economy Minister Kuo Jyh-huei, “the components are (mainly) low-end IC (integrated circuits) and batteries,” for reporters.
He said, “I can say with certainty they were not made in Taiwan,” to a question about whether the parts in the pagers that exploded were produced there. He also mentioned that the matter is being looked into by legal authorities.
Speaking to reporters in the parliament, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said negatively when asked if he had discussed the subject with the de facto Israeli ambassador.
“We are asking our missions abroad to raise their security awareness and will exchange relevant information with other countries.”
On Thursday, Bulgaria also became the focus of investigations after local media revealed that Norta Global Ltd, based in Sofia, was selling the pagers.
However, the state security agency of Bulgaria, DANS, declared on Friday that it had “indisputably established” that no pagers used in the attack on Lebanon were manufactured, imported, or exported from Bulgaria.
Furthermore, it stated that Norta and its Norwegian owner had neither purchased, sold, or traded the pagers inside Bulgaria’s borders.
Taiwan Investigation
Prosecutors questioned Hsu Ching-kuang, the founder and president of Gold Apollo, late on Thursday night before releasing him. Taiwanese officials are investigating any possible connection between the company’s extensive worldwide tech supply chains and the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon.
Teresa Wu, the lone employee of Apollo System, was another person at the prosecutors’ office. She departed late on Thursday without speaking with any reporters.
Hsu stated last week that one of his contacts for the agreement with BAC was a woman named Teresa.
According to a spokesman for the Shilin District Prosecutors Office in Taipei, Reuters, the office has interviewed two witnesses and has permission to inspect the four locations of their enterprises 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,” stated a spokesperson.
Hezbollah, an organization that is affiliated with Iran, has sworn to exact revenge on Israel, which has not acknowledged being behind the explosions. Since the fighting in Gaza broke out in October of last year, the two sides have been fighting across international borders.
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