Norwegian police have issued an international warrant for a man believed to be involved in the supply chain of a batch of explosive-stuffed pagers which exploded in the hands of Hezbollah militants last week.
The National Criminal Investigation Service of Norway (Kripos) say they issued international an warrant on Thursday for a Norwegian connected to the sale of exploding pagers. The 39-year-old wasn’t named in reported in the national press, other than to say — as in the report of Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, for instance — that he was “born in another country, but is a Norwegian citizen and has lived in Norway for twelve years.”
Foreign media named the wanted man as Rinson Jose, described as a “Norwegian Indian man” by Britain’s The Guardian, and a man with “dual Norwegian and Indian citizenship” by the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation (NOS). According to government documents, the man founded Norta Global Ltd in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2022, a company thought to be part of the convoluted supply chain that saw pagers with added explosives sent to Hezbollah.
Rinson Jose is reported to have travelled to the United States last week on the same day of the pagers distributed by Hezbollah to its networks exploded, injuring thousands and killed at least 12. The Indian was said by his Norwegian employer to have travelled to Boston for a business conference, but he went missing soon after arriving in America.
Oslo Police said they had received a missing person report. They said in a statement: “A missing persons case has been opened and we have sent out an international warrant for the person.”
Wires service Reuters managed to speak to a man they belive was Jose last week in the immediate aftermath of the blasts, and say of their telephone call with the man that he declined to comment on the pagers and hung up on their journalist when probed further. He is not known to have been heard from since.
As reported last week, investigators attempting to trace the adulterated pagers have, perhaps typically for what most presume to be intelligence agency wet work, come across a complex web obfuscating the origin and route of the digital devices. Branded and sold under the name of a Taiwanese brand, that company said it had licenced out its identity to a Hungarian business to sell a particular pager model, which itself denied being involved in manufacturing and stated it was simply an “intermediate”.
