Norway’s domestic intelligence agency PST has confirmed that Oslo police are looking into questions flying around a man with both Norwegian and Indian citizenship who’s listed as owner of a Bulgarian company tied to sales of pagers to the Lebanese militia Hizbollah. The man disappeared right after thousands of pagers exploded in Lebanon last week, killing dozens and injuring thousands.
Newspaper Aftenposten reports that the man has been residing in Norway and has held a full-time job in a company that hasn’t been publicly identified in Norway. Police said his employer hadn’t had any contact with the man since last Wednesday, the day after the explosions, when he allegedly traveled to the US to take part in a business-related course.
He was due back at work on Monday but hasn’t shown up. “We have no information that he came home to Norway during the weekend like we’d hoped,” his employer told state broadcaster NRK. The company had earlier taken contact with PST, “given the serious nature of the case,” and is also considering reporting him to police as missing.
“No one here can understand this,” the man’s employer told Aftenposten. “We have an employee who’s in a difficult situation and we need a clarification about all this. No one here has had any reason to think that he was involved with anything problematic away from work.”
The man is listed in Bulgarian business records as sole owner of a company that reportedly sold sabotaged pagers to Hizbollah. He has also shown up with a profile on an Israeli network’s website for entrepreneurs that’s since been removed. Israel is widely viewed as being behind the pager explosions. Its president has since denied involvement.
Norway’s foreign ministry has confirmed that the man’s employer took contact with the ministry along with PST but won’t comment further. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has said the pager attack “is an escalation of an already extremely dangerous situation” in the Middle East. “We have long warned against such an escalation.”
NewsinEnglish.no staff
