Two retired high-ranking officers of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad disclosed to CBS News the details of the operation to sabotage Hezbollah’s communications devices.
In 2022 the agency started to develop a pager that could hold the right amount of an explosive, they said in an interview. To convince Hezbollah to buy the pagers, Mossad posted ads on YouTube and backed them up with fake online testimonials from customers, according to one of the former agents, who was in charge of the plot. The spy agency fully manufactured the pagers and got into a licensing partnership with Taiwan’s pager manufacturer Gold Apollo after setting up shell companies, including one in Hungary.
Mossad used dummies to test how much explosive is required to be just enough to hurt the pager’s owner, but not the person next to him.
The other retired Mossad agent said the agency also weaponized walkie-talkies, and that work started more than a decade before Israel set them off in September in tandem with the pager operation. According to the man, Mossad sold more than 16,000 of the boobytrapped devices to Hezbollah, acting through shell companies.
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Two former Israeli intelligence agents have revealed how members of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah used Israeli made walkie-talkies booby-trapped with explosives for 10 years before they were detonated in a surprise attack in September this year.
ReplyDeleteThe operation expanded two years ago to include pagers, CBS said.
Mossad found that at that time Hezbollah was buying pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, it said. It set up a fake company which used the Gold Apollo name on pagers rigged with explosives, without the parent company realising.
CBS said Mossad put explosives inside powerful enough to hurt only the user.
Former members of the Israeli spy agency Mossad have recently revealed details of the exploding pagers plot that rocked Lebanon in September, both literally and figuratively speaking, on CBS News.
ReplyDeleteThe plot aimed against the Lebanese movement Hezbollah involved gadgets that weren’t just booby trapped but were actually developed by Mossad itself.
Booby-trapped pagers: Mossad developed pager-bombs designed to target only their users, causing injury to Hezbollah operatives without harming anyone nearby during detonation.
Deceptive licensing deal: Through shell companies, Mossad tricked Taiwanese pager manufacturer Gold Apollo into a licensing partnership to ensure the devices could be sold to Hezbollah without raising suspicion.
Fake ad campaign: To make the booby-trapped pagers appeared credible, Mossad staged a fake advertising campaign on YouTube, giving the product an air of legitimacy for its unsuspecting buyers.
Non-lethal terror tactic: The operation aimed not to kill Hezbollah members but to instill fear and paranoia within their ranks, mirroring the methods of psychological warfare or even terrorism.