A cross-border counter-terrorism operation has stopped a planned assassination on UK soil, resulting in a 19-year-old Norwegian man being handed a 20-year detention sentence for his role as a hired hitman for an Iran-linked international organised crime syndicate.
Johannes Natland, who turned 18 just weeks before crossing into the UK, was taken into custody in March 2025 at the Briar Court Hotel in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Court records show that when law enforcement officers breached his hotel room door, Natland defiantly mimed a shooting gesture toward officers with his bare hands before being restrained and handcuffed. A search of his room uncovered two fully functional firearms and 19 live rounds of ammunition, all pre-staged for the planned killing.
The case has pulled back the curtain on the growing dangerous trend of “violence-as-a-service” (VaaS), a business model pioneered by the Foxtrot Network — the Swedish organised crime group that recruited Natland, which Western authorities have confirmed maintains deep ties to the Iranian regime. Both the United Kingdom and United States have already imposed formal sanctions on the network for its criminal activities linked to the Iranian government.
Details of the plot laid out in court reveal how the network deliberately targets vulnerable young people to carry out contract killings, keeping its own leadership at arm’s length from the violence. Natland’s path to recruitment began years earlier: a once-promising young footballer growing up in Stavanger, Norway’s oil hub, he developed a daily drug addiction by age 18, dropped out of school, and suffered drug-induced psychosis that left him paranoid and institutionalized in a psychiatric unit. He later met his recruiter, a fellow teen going by the username “UnknownHustler”, while staying in a group home for at-risk youth, and was drawn into the Foxtrot Network’s scheme.
He entered the UK on March 17, 2025, via Manchester Airport using an emergency passport. Following step-by-step guidance sent through encrypted videos on the Signal messaging app, he traveled to Huddersfield, where the network had pre-hidden the weapons, a stolen vehicle, and a cash payment for the job.
The plot was disrupted only by a lucky break in the investigation: Norwegian law enforcement arrested Natland’s recruiter on unrelated charges and discovered explicit messages detailing the UK assassination plot on the teen’s phone. That discovery triggered a urgent multinational race against time to locate Natland before he could reach his still-unidentified target.
“There was pressure because he’d come into the country, and we knew his intention was to carry out a murder on UK soil,” explained Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London. “We had to move at pace and we intervened really quickly, and just before he sort of moved towards committing that murder.” To date, investigators have not been able to confirm who the intended victim was.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing at Woolwich Crown Court, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb emphasized the ruthless structure of the criminal network behind the plot: “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.”
Natland had already admitted to illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, and a jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on the charge of conspiracy to murder. His defense barrister Paul Hynes KC told the court that Natland’s severe mental illness, which was worsened — and likely caused — by his long-term drug abuse, severely impaired his ability to make rational decisions. Europol has repeatedly warned that the VaaS model used by the Foxtrot Network is a fast-growing threat across Europe, as criminal groups exploit vulnerable young people to carry out targeted violence while insulating their own leadership from prosecution.