Taiwan’s Prosecutors Probe Mystery of Exploding Hezbollah Pagers

Prosecutors in Taiwan said on Thursday they have questioned four individuals as witnesses in their investigation of the Hezbollah pager explosions in Lebanon.

The Shilin District Prosecutors Office in Taipei said two of the witnesses were current and former employees of Gold Apollo, the Taipei-based company whose brand appeared on the pagers purchased by Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist organization and political party that has been showering Israeli civilian targets with missiles for the past few months. 

The pagers suddenly began detonating in the hands and pockets of Hezbollah operatives on September 17, killing at least 12 people and injuring almost 3,000 others, including bystanders. The following day, portable radios used by Hezbollah began exploding, killing dozens more.

Hezbollah’s pagers were supposedly products of Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company specializing in the archaic technology – which Hezbollah and similar organizations favor because pagers cannot be monitored or tracked, as cell phones can.

Shortly after the pagers exploded, Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-kuang said the devices were not actually manufactured by his company, but were instead produced by a firm based in Budapest, Hungary, called BAC Consulting, which paid Gold Apollo for a license to make pagers based on its technology. The Taiwanese government swiftly backed Hsu by saying Hezbollah’s pagers were not made in Taiwan.

Hsu said his deal with BAC Consulting was arranged by an enigmatic woman named “Teresa,” who is apparently Teresa Wu, the sole employee of a company called Apollo Systems Ltd. that she created in April of this year.

Little information has been made public about Wu and her company, or her connections to BAC Consulting, and she does not seem willing to speak with reporters. Gold Apollo has also declined requests for comment from the press. Taipei prosecutors said they interviewed both Hsu and Wu last week.

It is not yet clear when the Hezbollah pagers were weaponized, how it was done, or precisely who did it. Israeli intelligence is widely suspected to be behind the explosions, but Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for either the pager or radio bombings.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said last week that his government has not spoken with the Israeli ambassador to express concerns about the incident. Taiwan and Israel are close allies, and there has been no public friction between them over the Hezbollah bombings. 

Israel rejected the Biden-Harris administration’s push for a ceasefire in Lebanon on Thursday. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said his government intends to keep fighting Hezbollah “with all our strength until victory, and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.”