September 18, 2024 | 18.24
READING TIME: 2 minutes
Explosive Pager Attack Brings Hezbollah to Its Knees in Lebanon. The action attributed to Israel causes a dozen deaths and thousands of injuries, inflicting heavy losses on the organization. The details of the operation filter through between rumors and theories, with the hypothesis of a manipulation of the devices in which ‘doses’ of penthrite, a powerful explosive, were inserted.
Who made pagers?
One question remains unanswered. Who produced the pagers that Israel allegedly intercepted? The devices reportedly bear the brand name of Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company. The factory, as reported by the Washington Post, immediately identifies itself: production is outsourced to BAC Consulting KFT, a company based in Hungary that has been managing orders for certain geographic areas for a couple of years.
The Hungarian track
The trail would then lead to Budapest, where another red light comes on. The company Bac Consulting is only a “commercial intermediary without any manufacturing plant in Hungary” of pagers, says the Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs on social media, thus stating that he is not aware that the pagers were “produced in Hungary”.
“This case does not pose any national security risk to Hungary,” Kovacs said, explaining that the authorities are working with international agencies and organizations to clarify what happened. The statement from the Budapest government states that the Hungarian company does not even have an operational site in the country: “There is a registered manager at the stated address and the devices in question have never been in Hungary.”
Taiwan opts out
In Taiwan, the founder of Gold Apollo does not want to be implicated: “I’m minding my own business, why should I be involved in a terrorist attack?” says Hsu Ching-kuang.
The pagers, the Asian company founded in 1995 points out, only have reception and not transmission capabilities. The battery alone would never be able to cause a potentially lethal explosion. Gold Apollo has exported 260 thousand pagers from 2022 to date, about 41 thousand in 2024 alone. Most of the products are destined for Europe and the USA, there are no documents relating to direct exports to Lebanon, according to the Ministry of Economy.
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