WEST BANK (Middle East Eye) – The Zionist regime’s Shin Bet spy agency is examining whether China hid a bugging device in a thermal mug gifted to the regime’s science, technology and space minister after a routine screening of the gift found “suspicious materials”.
Haaretz said the mug, addressed to Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen, aroused suspicion when it set off an alarm during a screening.
All the mugs given by the Chinese embassy to regime offices, which were part of a greater gift box, were collected for further inspection after the finding, according to the Jerusalem Post.
The newspaper reported the Chinese embassy as saying the accusation that the mug was bugged was a “baseless rumor”.
The occupying regime’s Army Radio said ministries had been asked to increase their supervision of gifts over fears they could contain “listening devices or cameras”.
“Following the incident, security elements reiterated to regime ministries the issue of receiving gifts from foreign sources, which require an examination,” the report said.
The occupying regime’s ministries have been instructed not to bring such gifts into offices, but to instead send them to security officers first.
In 2018, China denied a report in the French newspaper Le Monde that it had bugged the African Union’s headquarters, which Beijing had built and paid for in Addis Ababa.