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Authorities have issued an international arrest warrant for a Norwegian linked to the detonation of communication devices used by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, police said Thursday.
Rinson Jose, a Norwegian-Indian man linked to the sale of pagers to Hezbollah that exploded last week, has been reported missing.
Jose, 39, disappeared while on a work trip to the U.S. last week. He is a founder of a Bulgarian company that was reportedly part of the pager supply chain.
“Yesterday, Sept. 25, the Oslo police district received a missing person report in connection with the pager case,” Oslo police said in an email to Reuters.
“A missing persons case has been opened, and we have sent out an international warrant for the person,” it added.
Hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies detonated across Lebanon last week, killing at least 37 people and wounding nearly 3,000 in an attack widely blamed on Israel, which has refused to comment.
Jose declined to comment on the pagers when reached by phone last Wednesday, Sept. 18, and hung up when asked about the Bulgarian business. He did not return repeated calls and text messages.
Jose’s Norwegian employer, DN Media Group, said he left for a conference in Boston on Sept. 17, and the company has not been able to reach him since Sept. 18. He works at the group’s sales department.
In 2022, Jose founded Sofia-based company Norta Global Ltd, Bulgaria’s corporate registry shows.
Bulgaria has investigated the company’s role in the supply of booby-trapped pagers but has found no evidence that they were made or exported from the country.
Hungarian website Telex reported that Norta Global had imported the devices and then delivered them to Hezbollah.
Bulgaria’s National Security Agency (SANS) later said the company had nothing to do with the delivery of the exploding devices, but Oslo police said they had opened a “preliminary investigation into the information that has emerged.”
Norta Global, founded in April 2022, last year declared revenue of 650,000 euros ($725,000) for consulting activities outside the European Union.
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