Closing case, Taiwan prosecutors say Hezbollah exploding pagers not made by local firms
Law enforcement officials say AR-924 model made outside of Taiwan and traded and shipped by Frontier Group Entity; admit they don’t know exact identities of that firm’s employees
Taiwan on Monday said it had closed a probe into pagers that exploded in Lebanon in September and caused a deadly blow to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group, saying no Taiwanese citizens or companies were involved.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time during Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting that Israel was behind the pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah in September, according to quotes leaked to Hebrew media. His office confirmed this on Monday.
Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies containing explosives detonated on their Hezbollah owners across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 16 and 17, marking that start of a major Israeli offensive against the group.
The pager explosions occurred after almost a year of incessant rocket and drone attacks on Israel by Hezbollah, which began a day after Hamas’s October 7 massacre and led to the evacuation of some 60,000 residents from northern Israel towns on the border with Lebanon.
Security sources have previously said the pagers carried the name of Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, though the company has asserted that it did not make them. Taiwan’s government has also said the pagers were not made in Taiwan.
Taipei prosecutors, who were investigating the case, said in a statement the AR-924 pager model that exploded in Lebanon was manufactured, traded, and shipped by a firm called Frontier Group Entity, and made outside of Taiwan. They added, however, that Gold Apollo had authorized the company to use the Apollo trademark.
“There is no evidence indicating that any domestic manufacturers or individuals were accomplices in the relevant explosions, violating the Counter-Terrorism Financing Act, or engaging in other illegal activities,” the prosecutors said in a statement.
“No concrete evidence of criminal activity has been discovered in this case, nor have any specific individuals been implicated in any criminal activity, following a comprehensive investigation.”
Prosecutors have previously confirmed that they questioned Gold Apollo’s president and founder Hsu Ching-kuang and a woman called Teresa Wu, the sole employee of a company called Apollo Systems Ltd.
In their statement, the prosecutors said Wu acted as a liaison with Frontier, but there was no evidence she “had prior knowledge or participated in any conspiracy or collaboration related to the explosion incidents.”
The prosecutors said there was some information they did not know, including the exact identities of the Frontier employees Wu communicated with.
It said one person was called “T” and was presumably the head of Frontier, while another was called “M” and was presumably the sales director.
Gold Apollo told Reuters it had also just seen the prosecutors’ statement, and that it was not immediately able to comment further.
Gold Apollo previously denied producing the devices and instead pointed the finger at its Budapest-based partner BAC Consulting KFT, alleged in some reports to be a Mossad front company.
Lebanon said nearly 3,000 people were wounded in the attack. The toll did not differentiate between civilians and members of the terror group, and among the wounded was Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani.
A Hezbollah official told Reuters that the attacks put 1,500 of the group’s fighters out of commission due to their injuries, with many having been blinded or had their hands blown off.
In the aftermath, various media outlets reported that the attack was a highly sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation years in the making in which Hezbollah was fooled into purchasing the compromised devices.
The explosions were followed up by a series of Israeli airstrikes that took out much of Hezbollah’s command structure, including terror chief Hassan Nasrallah, and an ongoing limited ground operation in southern Lebanon to eliminate the immediate threats posed by the terror group to Israel’s northern border communities.
