Norwegian Teen Guilty Of Murder Plot For Gang Linked To Iran

A Norwegian teenager has been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in Britain after being recruited by the Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organised crime group that British prosecutors say is used by the Iranian government to carry out attacks in Europe.

An Old Bailey jury deliberated for 17 hours and six minutes before finding Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, guilty of conspiracy to murder following a retrial.

Natland, from Stavanger in south-west Norway, travelled to the United Kingdom on 17 March 2025 after being added to a Signal group chat in which he almost immediately asked “Who is to be killed?” He was arrested two days later at the Briar Court Hotel in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, where police found a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver and 12 rounds of live ammunition in his hotel room, along with £2,000 in cash.

He had been controlled by an English-speaking boss known as “Agent 47,” a reference to the Hitman gaming and film franchise, and recruited by a 17-year-old in Norway known as “Generalen.”

A message chain showed a figure of €25,000 “in the pot” for the assassination of an unidentified person in England.

Natland told the jury he was not an international assassin and had initially agreed to the plan to fund a drug habit, thinking it was a joke.

“I wasn’t an international assassin. I thought people had this impression and expected me to be this guy. I knew I wasn’t,” he said. He said he had planned to shoot himself in the foot to avoid carrying out the killing.

“Faced with the alternative of being shot in the head, I thought being shot in the foot is better,” he said. The jury rejected his account.

Natland’s recruiter, the teenager known as Generalen, was convicted in Norway in May last year of attempting to contribute to the murder plot.

Three more people have been charged by Norwegian police, with a decision yet to be taken on whether to formally indict them.

The Foxtrot Network is led by Rawa Majid, also known as the Kurdish Fox, who fled to Iran in September 2023 and was subsequently recruited by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence to carry out attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets across Europe in exchange for protection and safe haven in Tehran.

Both the United States and United Kingdom have sanctioned the group over its alleged links to Iran.