Norway drops investigation into suspected links to Lebanon exploding pagers

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OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s PST security police force said on Monday it had found no grounds to further investigate Norwegian links to the supply of booby-trapped pagers to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which exploded in September killing dozens of people and wounding thousands.

Israel has acknowledged responsibility for the pager attacks, which took Hezbollah by surprise and were followed by a major air and ground military campaign against the Iran-backed militant group.

Norway’s PST had launched a preliminary investigation into any Norwegian link to the case, after it emerged that a Norwegian man was listed as the owner of a Bulgarian company under investigation in Bulgaria over possible links to the case.

“PST’s overall assessment of the findings in the case indicates that there is no basis for initiating an ordinary investigation within our mandate,” PST’s lawyer Haris Hrenovica told Reuters on Monday via its spokesman.

He didn’t elaborate. PST’s is a counterintelligence and counterterrorism agency.

Bulgaria’s security agency, DANS, said on Sept. 20 it had “indisputably established” that no pagers used in the Lebanon attack were made or exported from Bulgaria.

The Norwegian owner of the Bulgarian firm under investigation in Bulgaria, Rinson Jose, 39, left Norway for the United States on Sept. 17, the day the pagers exploded in Lebanon.

He had worked in sales at a Norwegian employer, DN Media Group, which filed a missing persons case with the police. Police said they closed the missing persons case on Nov. 5 after Jose contacted the employer.

Norwegian authorities did not reveal Jose’s whereabouts. When Reuters called his Norwegian phone number on Monday, a voice message said the phone was switched off. He did not return a request for comment on WhatsApp.