By Ben Blanchard
BRAND-NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan (Reuters) -Taiwan’s Gold Apollo stated on Wednesday the pagers that were utilized in the ignitions in Lebanon on Tuesday were not made by it yet by a firm called BAC which has a permit to utilize its brand name.
At the very least 9 individuals were eliminated and virtually 3,000 injured when pagers utilized by Hezbollah participants detonated at the same time throughout Lebanon on Tuesday.
Images of ruined pagers evaluated by Reuters revealed a layout and sticker labels on the back that followed pagers made byGold Apollo An elderly Lebanese safety resource informed Reuters that Hezbollah had actually gotten 5,000 pagers from Taiwan- based Gold Apollo.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,’ Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-Kuang, told reporters at the company’s offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
The company said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.
“We just supply brand name hallmark permission and have no participation in the layout or production of this item,” the statement said.
Hsu earlier said that the firm with the licence was based in Europe but later declined to comment on BAC’s location.
While Hsu was meeting with reporters, police officials arrived at the company.
Hezbollah fighters began using pagers in the belief they would be able to evade Israeli tracking of their locations, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters this year.
Hsu said did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said it was carrying out a ” safety and clinical examination” into the causes of the blasts.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, according to a senior Lebanese security source and another source.
Hsu said Gold Apollo was also a victim of the incident.
“We might not be a big business yet we are an accountable one,” he said. “This is really humiliating.”
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Tom Hogue, Michael Perry and Edwina Gibbs)
