Yesterday we reported that Israel inserted explosive material in the pagers that were purchased from Taiwan and headed for Hezbollah.
However today we learn that those pagers were actually assembled by a company in Hungary who is licensed to sell under the Taiwan company’s name.
Here’s more from Politico:
A Taiwanese company said the exploding pagers that injured thousands of people across Lebanon on Tuesday were actually manufactured in Hungary.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party, claimed that Israel was behind the security incident that struck its members. The New York Times also reported, citing U.S. and other officials, that Israel hid explosives in the batch of detonated pagers.
The pagers, which went off simultaneously, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000, had branding consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese pager manufacturing firm.
But the Taiwan-based company said in a statement that the AR-924 model used in the attack was manufactured and sold by a Hungarian company called BAC Consulting, which had a license to use its brand on the pagers.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo’s statement said. “Our company only provides the brand trademark authorization and is not involved in the design or manufacturing of this product.”
Reuters is reporting that the two-way radios (walkie talkies) were purchased around the same time as the pagers:
The hand-held radios that exploded today were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
Israel’s spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
I am really amazed at how Israel managed to booby-trap all of these communication devices used by Hezbollah. This will go into the record books as one of the most precise and targeted attacks to kill the enemy with extremely low numbers of civilian casualties.
