"The product [AR-924 beepers] was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Gold Apollo CEO Hsu Ching-kuang said. According to a company statement, it had authorized "BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC." The CEO also noted that there had been a problem with receiving payment from BAC, which came via the Middle East.
Budapest-based BAC has not actually performed any activities, has no office and is only registered with a registered office provider. Instead, the firm was in contact with the Sofia-based company Norta Global, which was actually behind the deal. Although on paper, it was BAC that signed the contract with Gold Apollo, Hungarian news outlet Telex reported.
The pagers from Taiwan were not brought in by BAC but by Norta Global, which sold and shipped the devices to Hezbollah. Owned by a Norwegian citizen Rinson Jose, Norta Global was only registered in 2022 and on paper deals with project management.
?? ?? The Hungarian government’s position on the "pager issue": authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary. It has one manager registered at its declared address, and the referenced…
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) September 18, 2024
The said pagers that were used by members of the militant group exploded in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 37 people, including an eight-year-old girl. The "sophisticated attack" wounded several thousand, including Iran's Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani.
At about 3:30 p.m. local time, the pagers in people's hands or pockets started heating up and then blasting, leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders. It was not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the exploding pagers. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for the remote attack. (Related: ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISM: Israel bombards southern Lebanon with TOXIC white phosphorus shells.)
The militant group's leader ordered members in February to stop using cell phones to avoid being tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told the Associated Press that the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use.
Meanwhile, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has condemned the bombings and called for an investigation "due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians, and the broader consequences for the entire population."
Bulgaria, Norway launch probes on the "tampered pagers" that exploded in Syria and Lebanon
On Thursday, the Bulgarian government said that it is launching an investigation into a Sofia-based Norta Global linked to the sale of thousands of beepers that were packed with explosives by Israeli intelligence agents and blown up across Lebanon and Syria a couple of days back.
Norta Global is located at a residential address in the Bulgarian capital. Like its Hungarian counterpart, the company is registered with a "headquarters service provider," which hosts 196 other companies.
Bulgarian state security agency DANS also announced that it is working with the interior ministry to probe the role of an unnamed company registered in Bulgaria in the terror attacks that rocked Lebanon. DANS said it "did not detect any shipments" of the pagers on Bulgarian territory.
Meanwhile, Norway police also opened a probe as the Bulgaria-based company is owned by a Norwegian citizen. "We can confirm that the police have launched preliminary investigations into the information that has come to light, and are continuously assessing any possible measures," Oslo Police District Operations Manager Alexander Osterhaug was quoted as saying by national broadcaster NRK.
Israel has also not responded to the deadly attacks. Even the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distanced itself from a post on X by his advisor Topaz Luk, which hinted that Tel Aviv was responsible for the explosions.
The mass explosion of pagers came amid an exchange of cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israel against the backdrop of a brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 41,300 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 95,000 others following a Hamas attack last October.
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