Johannes Natland jailed 20 years over Iran-linked murder plot

Johannes Natland, a 19-year-old from Norway, received a 20-year prison term on Friday for flying to Britain to commit a murder for hire.

From Stavanger, Natland had agreed to pull the trigger on an unidentified target in return for 25,000 euros. Police arrested him in a Huddersfield hotel in March 2025, just two days after he landed.

Officers searching the room found a pistol, a revolver and live rounds. After a retrial, a jury convicted him in July of conspiracy to murder.

Johannes Natland recruited online

The Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organised crime group, recruited Natland while he played a game online. At the time, he held a part-time job in a pizza restaurant.

Counterterrorism officers at the Metropolitan Police say the group has ties to Iran’s government. Britain and the United States have both imposed sanctions on it.

Someone known as “Generalen”, a 17-year-old, hired him. A Norwegian court jailed that teenager for 14 years last year, and a 16-year-old still awaits trial there.

The former youth footballer reached Manchester Airport on an emergency passport, two days before his arrest. When police came for him, he mimed holding a gun and pretended to shoot at one officer. They also seized £2,000 in cash.

Prosecutors said the network guided Natland through the Signal app after he landed. Handlers had also left weapons and cash ready for him.

Judge sentences Johannes Natland

At Woolwich Crown Court, Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb told him: “You agreed to be the enforcer and pursued it.” She said he had many chances to pull out.

Johannes Natland admitted having the guns and ammunition. He denied the murder plot, however, and claimed that he never meant to go ahead with the plan, a claim the judge dismissed.

The judge rejected that account. No one died or suffered injury, she noted, but she felt sure he would have acted if police had not stepped in.

She ruled that he must spend at least 13 years and four months behind bars before anyone considers parole.

Foxtrot Network and Iran

Helen Flanagan, who heads Counter Terrorism Policing London, said the target of the plot never emerged. She said police caught him just hours before he was due to carry out an assassination. Detectives, she added, found no evidence of a direct link to Iran in this case. The judge said the network recruits young people from a distance to carry out violent crimes.

Even so, she said hostile states increasingly use criminal proxies, often recruiting young people online with promises of money.

Western governments accuse the Foxtrot Network, led by Rawa Majid, of attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe on Iran’s behalf. Iran has rejected the allegations.

Europol has described the group’s approach as “violence-as-a-service.” Police say this was the first recorded attack the network organised in Britain.

For now, the case shows how gangs can turn teenagers into hired guns, a pattern that worries police across the continent.

Johannes Natland now faces more than a decade in custody, far from his home in Norway.