How Mossad used shell company to rig pagers and attack Hezbollah
A preliminary investigation by Lebanese authorities into the communications devices that blew up in Lebanon this week found that they were implanted with explosives before arriving in the country, according to a letter sent to the UN Security Council by Lebanon's mission to the United Nations.
The authorities also determined the devices, which included pagers and hand-held radios, were detonated by sending electronic messages to the devices, says the letter, seen by Reuters on Thursday. Israel was responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks, Lebanon's UN mission said.
The 15-member Security Council is due to meet on Friday over the blasts.
The New York Times spoke to three Israeli intelligence officers who said BAC Consulting, a Hungary-based manufacturer of pagers, was a shell company set up by Mossad to rig the devices at the source before shipping them to Lebanon.
The report claims that BAC Consulting was under a contract to produce the devices on behalf of Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese company whose pagers exploded and killed nine on Tuesday. The report added that at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers.
BAC did not take ordinary clients and Hezbollah mattered to them. The batteries were laced with explosive Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN), a very powerful explosive material.
As per Reuters, 3 grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months. On Tuesday, the Hezbollah members received a message on their page, thinking it was from their commander but it triggered explosions across the country.
The attacks on Hezbollah's communications equipment on Tuesday and Wednesday killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000, overwhelming Lebanese hospitals and wreaking bloody havoc on the militant group.
Israel has not directly commented on the attacks, which security sources say were probably carried out by its Mossad spy agency, which has a long history of carrying out sophisticated attacks on foreign soil.
Meanwhile, the president and founder of a Taiwanese pager company linked to the detonation of thousands of pagers targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon was questioned by prosecutors late into the night on Thursday, then released.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo's president and founder Hsu Ching-kuang has said it did not manufacture the devices used in the attack, and that they were made by a Budapest-based company BAC which has a licence to use its brand.
Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.
Hsu declined to answer reporters questions as he left one of the Taipei offices of Taiwan prosecutors late Thursday. Calls to the prosecutors office before office hours on Friday were not answered. Taipei prosecutors have not issued any statements so far about their investigations into Gold Apollo.
Another person also seen leaving the prosecutors office was Teresa Wu, the sole employee of a company called Apollo Systems Ltd, who did not speak to reporters as she left the prosecutors late on Thursday.
Hsu said this week a person called Teresa had been one of his contacts for the deal with Hungary-based firm BAC.
Company records show Apollo Systems was set up by Wu in April this year. It was not immediately clear what the relationship is between her company and BAC.
Taiwan's government has said it is investigating what happened and police have made several visits to Hsu's company, in a small, unassuming office in Taipei's next door city of New Taipei.
With Reuters inputs
