Askume North, Sept 20 – The chairman and founder of a Taiwanese pager company linked to the bombing of thousands of pagers targeting Lebanon’s Hezbollah was questioned by prosecutors late on Thursday before being released.
Su Qingguang, chairman and founder of Taiwan’s Gold Apollo , said the equipment used in the attack was not manufactured by the company but by Budapest-based BAC, which has a license to use the company’s brand.
Photos of the destroyed pagers analysed by Askume showed that the format of the pagers and the sticker on the back matched those made by Gold Apollo.
Xu declined to answer reporters’ questions as he left the Taiwan prosecutor’s office in Taipei on Thursday night. Calls to the prosecutor’s office before business time on Friday were not returned. Taipei prosecutors have not yet issued a statement on the Golden Apollo investigation.
Another person seen leaving the prosecutor’s office was Teresa Wu, the sole employee at a company called Apollo Systems Ltd. She did not speak to reporters as she left the prosecutor’s office late Thursday.
Hsu said this week that a person named Teresa was one of his contacts for the deal with Hungary’s BAC.
Company records show that Apollo Systems was founded by Wu in April. It is unclear what the relationship is between his company and BAC.
The Taiwanese government said it was investigating the incident, and police visited a small office of Xu’s company in New Taipei, a city near Taipei, several times.
Pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded simultaneously in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others. A senior Lebanese security source and another source said the explosives inside the devices were planted by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, but Israel has not claimed responsibility for the bombing. The two sides have been engaged in cross-border fighting since the conflict in Gaza began in October last year .
