Norway issues wanted notice for man connected to exploding pagers in Lebanon

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway issued an international wanted notice on Thursday for a man linked to a Bulgaria-based company that may have been involved in the dissemination of exploding electronic devices to the militant Hezbollah group that killed dozens and wounded thousands in Lebanon last week.

The notice is part of a multi-country investigation trying to piece together how thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies were rigged to explode and their trail to Lebanon.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for the coordinated two-day attacks, which killed at least 39 people and wounded more than 3,000, including civilians. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.

“We have on behalf of the Oslo police sent out an international wanted notice today,” Åste Dahle Sundet, a spokeswoman for Norway's National Criminal Investigation Service told The Associated Press.

The agency declined to name the man or provide his nationality. All that is known is that he was listed as working for a Norwegian company.

Norwegian news agency NTB wrote on Thursday that the 39-year-old man had traveled to the United States last week but vanished after arriving there. The man was subsequently reported missing on Wednesday, one of Norway's major tabloids VG wrote, citing police.

The CEO of the man’s employer, Norway-based DN Group, told the AP in an email that the company had “tried to contact our employee without success since we first heard the serious allegations about his alleged private activity, which we did not know about and has nothing to do with us as a company.”

“We haven’t heard from him since (last) Wednesday, and we don’t know where he is. This worries us,” DN Group CEO Amund Djuve said.

Djuve also did not give the man's name.

The man holds a Norwegian passport and has lived in Norway for 12 years but was born in another country, NTB reported. The news agency described him as one of the founders of the Bulgarian company that was allegedly connected to supplying the pagers to Hezbollah.

The Bulgarian company is not the only firm implicated in the pagers' journey to Lebanon.

Last week, Taiwanese firm Gold Apollo, whose name appeared on the pagers, said it had authorized Budapest, Hungary-based BAC Consulting to use its brand for the devices that exploded, but insisted the Hungarian company was responsible for their manufacturing and design.

Hungary’s Special Service for National Security told the AP last week that the CEO of BAC Consulting had been interviewed “several times” as part of an investigation, but that they believed the company had not taken part in rigging the devices to explode.

“The results of the investigation so far have made it clear that the so-called pagers have never been on Hungarian territory, and that no Hungarian company or Hungarian expert was involved in their manufacture or modification!” the agency said in an email.

Norway’s domestic security agency, known by its acronym PST, earlier told the AP that it was checking whether a Norwegian national had any connection with the company that sold the pagers that exploded in Lebanon.

PST stressed that it was not a formal investigation and that there was currently no concrete suspicion against the man.

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Spike reported from Budapest, Hungary.