The CEO of Taiwan-based Gold Apollo has been acquitted after questioning about his role in the deadly bombings.
Parts used in thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday in a deadly blow to Hezbollah were not made in Taiwan, Taiwan’s economy minister said.
Taiwan-based Gold Apollo said this week it did not manufacture the devices used in the attack and that Budapest-based BAC, where the pagers were found, has a license to use its brand.
It is unclear how or when the pagers were armed so they could be detonated remotely. The same applies to the hundreds of hand-held radios used by Hezbollah that exploded on Wednesday in the second wave of attacks. The two incidents killed 37 people and injured 3,000 in Lebanon.
“(Mainly) low-end IC (integrated circuits) and batteries,” Taiwan’s Economy Minister Guo Jih-hui told reporters on Friday.
When pressed on whether the components in the blasted pagers were made in Taiwan, he said, ”I can say for sure they were not made in Taiwan,” adding that Justice Department officials are investigating the case.
Security sources said Israel was responsible for Tuesday’s pager blasts, which raised the stakes in the growing conflict between the two sides. Israel did not directly comment on the attack.
Speaking to reporters in parliament, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Hsia-lung answered “no” when asked if he had met with the actual Israeli ambassador to express concern about the case.
“We ask our missions abroad to raise their security awareness and exchange relevant information with other countries,” Lin said.
Gold Apollo’s chairman and founder, Hsu Ching-kuang, was questioned by prosecutors until Thursday night and later released as Taiwanese authorities looked into any possible link between its sprawling global technology supply chains and the devices used in the attacks in Lebanon.
Another person at the prosecutor’s office was Teresa Wu, the sole employee of Apollo Systems, who did not speak to reporters because she left late Thursday.
Hsu said this week that the person known as Teresa was one of his contacts for the contract with BAC.
A spokesman for the Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office in Taipei told Reuters news agency that it had questioned the two men as witnesses and had given consent to search four of their companies in Taiwan as part of its investigation.
“To ensure the safety of ourselves and its people, we will soon try to determine if there is any involvement of these Taiwanese companies,” the spokesman said.
Hezbollah, which is aligned with Iran, has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which has not claimed responsibility for the bombings. The two sides have been engaged in a cross-border war since the conflict erupted in Gaza last October.
