Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah earlier this year warned his followers against using mobile phones. Instead, thousands of pagers were purchased. And thus, yesterday’s extensive pager attack against the Shia Muslim terrorist militia was made possible.

“The spy is the mobile phone you carry! The one your wife carries and your children have. The mobile phone is a spy, and it is a dangerous one. Not just any spy, a dangerous spy! It reveals very detailed and accurate information,” Nasrallah said.

In February this year, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned his followers against using mobile phones, especially so-called smart phones with GPS and the ability to install apps, due to rumors that the Israeli military had managed to track and attack Hizbollah’s militiamen using their mobile phones.

Investing in pagers

Hizbollah therefore began looking for alternatives to mobile phones for electronic communication between its members, officers, units, and militiamen.

The choice fell on the robust, dust and waterproof pager AR-924 from the Taiwanese brand Gold Apollo. It has the ability to send up to a hundred characters, store 30 messages, and most importantly – it is presumed to lack both GPS and the ability to install spy apps.

Additionally, the AR-924 has a battery life of up to 85 days. In a country where electricity can be cut off at any time by Israeli airstrikes, it is simply seen as the perfect choice for Hizbollah’s internal communication.

According to media reports, 5000 such pagers were purchased by the Shia Muslim militia.

Not manufactured in Taiwan

However, the pagers were not purchased directly from the Taiwanese company. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance, Gold Apollo did not export any pagers to Lebanon between January and August this year.

Instead, they were purchased from a company called BAC Consulting KFT, located in Budapest, Hungary. In fact, it is this company that manufactures the pagers. Or claims to manufacture them.

“In accordance with our cooperation agreement, we only give BAC permission to use our brand for product sales in certain selected regions, but the design and manufacturing are solely BAC’s responsibility,” Gold Apollo writes on its website.

BAC Consulting KFT was registered in May 2022, and according to Hungarian authorities, a woman is registered as the sole owner of the mysterious company. The address leads to a residence in Budapest.

Bomb in the battery

Therefore, a hypothesis is now being put forward that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has been involved in the production of the thousands of pagers, which were then sold to Hizbollah.

Carlos Perez, a security analyst at TrustedSec, told Fortune that the pagers’ batteries likely contained “half explosives and half actual battery.”

The explosive charge was then equipped with a remote triggering mechanism, which was triggered on Tuesday afternoon when thousands of pagers in Beirut and around Lebanon suddenly exploded.

Around 3000, mostly Hizbollah militiamen and their relatives, were injured. According to Lebanese media, several have also become “martyrs,” meaning they have died. At least 200 are critically injured.

The news site Axios reports that the Israelis chose to trigger the built-in explosive charges on Tuesday, out of fear that they would eventually be discovered.

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