Lebanon's 'Trojan Horse': Israel 15 Years in the Making of Pager Bombing – ABC News

“Trojan Horse” in Lebanon: Israel spent 15 years preparing an operation to blow up pagers, – ABC News Margarita Voloshina

Israel has been preparing an operation to blow up pagers in Lebanon for many years/Channel 24 collage, illustrative photo

Thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon in the middle of the day the other day. Israel had been preparing this operation for at least 15 years.

ABC News reported this, citing a source in American intelligence. Front companies associated with Israeli intelligence officers were involved in the operation.

Israel had been preparing to blow up pagers in Lebanon for years

The front companies were a cover for the real pager manufacturer. Moreover, some of the employees of the companies did not even know who they were really working for. One of these companies was BAC Consulting, a firm registered in Budapest.

According to the contract, the company was to manufacture pagers under the brand name of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo. However, a Hungarian government spokesman told the publication that BAC Consulting was only a “sales agent” and did not manufacture anything in the country.

According to sources, the pagers contained one to two ounces of explosives and a remote switch to trigger the explosion. US intelligence considers such operations too dangerous for civilians, so they do not use them in their practice.

According to The New York Times, Hezbollah members began using pagers for communication instead of mobile phones several years ago. The publication notes that Israel saw an “opportunity” in this decision.

It is noted that the aforementioned BAC Consulting company had regular clients for whom it manufactured regular pagers. But the only client that “was truly important,” according to the NYT, was Hezbollah, for whom the pagers were made separately.

Against this background, the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security announced that it was investigating a company registered in Sofia that was allegedly a front for the production of pagers for Hezbollah. They added that no customs operations were carried out in the country with the goods in question.

Subsequently, the Norwegian Security Police (PST) announced the launch of a “preliminary investigation into information that appeared” in the media regarding the owner of the Bulgarian company, who allegedly turned out to be a Norwegian citizen. So far, no confirmation or comment on this matter has been made public.

As of September 17, 12 people were killed and 2,800 were injured. Then pagers belonging to Hezbollah members exploded all over the country. Both the pagers and the portable radios had been purchased five months earlier. The explosives were probably planted in the devices by Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.