A Norwegian teenager who flew to the UK to carry out a murder on behalf of Iran-backed criminals has been jailed for 20 years.
Johannes Natland, 19, was hired by the Foxtrot crime network to carry out a “hit” on an unknown target in exchange for £21,000 ($28,000). The network, along with its founder, Kurdish-born gangster Rawa Majid, has been placed under sanctions by the US and the UK for carrying out attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets on behalf of Iran, using teenagers recruited through social media apps. It is known for hiring teenagers for attacks that Europol has called "violence-as-a-service".
In sentencing Natland, Justice Cheema-Grubb said: "The Foxtrot network is an organised crime group which has developed an arm's-length method of recruiting young people to carry out violent crimes. You were recruited to travel to England to kill an unidentified target."
She said Natland, from Stavanger in south-west Norway, must spend a minimum of 13 years in custody.
He was arrested in a hotel room in Huddersfield, northern England, in March 2025 with two firearms and ammunition in his possession. He imitated holding a firearm and pretended to shoot one of the officers, who recovered £2,000 in cash from the room.
Natland admitted possessing a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver and ammunition, but denied conspiracy to murder and claimed he did not intend to carry out the plan.
But he was convicted in July after a retrial and was sentenced at London's Woolwich Crown Court to detention for 20 years. The case was the first recorded instance of the network organising an attack in Britain.
"Natland was arrested just hours before he was due to carry out an assassination here in the UK," said Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London. “Natland was clearly being tasked by someone in the Foxtrot network, an organised criminal group ... orchestrating violence against Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe on behalf of the Iranian regime.
“The intended target of this specific assassination has never been identified, and we found no evidence of any direct link to Iran in this case. However, as recent events have shown, CTP will seek to proactively disrupt any attempts by hostile states to carry out criminal acts in the UK."
She said criminal proxies were “one of the tactics increasingly used by foreign states seeking to cause harm" to the UK. "They often recruit people online with promises of significant financial reward," she added. "But the reality is that those carrying out these tasks are viewed as disposable assets by those directing them. They are used when convenient and abandoned when circumstances change.”
Natland was the latest young adult to stand trial in Britain over serious criminal acts allegedly carried out after being recruited online for money, often as an unwitting proxy for a foreign state.
This week, the head of the UK’s domestic intelligence service, Ken McCallum, said MI5 had made more than 50 arrests in the past year specifically linked to Iran operations.
Frank Ferguson, head of the Crown Prosecution Service's special crime and counter-terrorism division, described Natland’s actions as a “calculated plan to kill for money” and said the case showed how organised crime networks operated “across borders and exploit young people to carry out serious violence”.
The court heard Natland had been recruited when an individual referred to as Agent 47 used social media to contact a figure with the username Generalen to ask for someone to carry out an assassination in the UK.
In the message, Agent 47 told Generalen that there was €25,000 ($24,306) “in the pot”. Swedish police believe Agent 47 is Ali Shehab Ahmed, a senior figure in the Foxtrot network, who was arrested in Sulaymaniyah in Iraq in December.
