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Moment 'hitman' mimed shooting police during arrest

A teenager who travelled from Norway to the UK to carry out a "hit" for an organised crime group has been sentenced to 20 years detention.

Johannes Natland, 19, was arrested in a hotel room in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, with two working guns and 19 rounds of live ammunition in March 2025, the Old Bailey previously heard.

During his retrial, a jury heard the teen was "recruited" by the Foxtrot Network, which was described as a Swedish organised crime group backed by the Iranian regime.

Natland, who had admitted to possession of the firearms and ammunition, was unanimously found guilty of conspiracy to murder and sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court on Friday.

The Foxtrot Network has been sanctioned by both the UK and the US for its close links to the Iranian government, with Natland's target remaining unclear.

Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said: "We haven't been able to establish exactly who the intended victim was."

The Foxtrot Network is known for pioneering a relatively new phenomenon of hiring teenage killers that Europol has called "violence-as-a-service" (VaaS).

At the sentencing hearing, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Natland: "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 flew into Manchester Airport on an emergency passport on 17 March 2025, shortly after his 18th birthday.

He was guided by videos on the messaging app Signal to Huddersfield, where the guns, a stolen car and a stash of cash were hidden.

He was prevented from carrying out the hit after Norwegian police arrested the teenager who had recruited him for the Foxtrot Network and found messages about the UK plot on his phone.

Johannes Natland was found guilty of conspiracy to murder

There was then a race against time to find Natland before he located his unknown target in England.

"There was pressure because he'd come into the country, and we knew his intention was to carry out a murder on UK soil," said Flanagan.

"We had to move at pace and we intervened really quickly, and just before he sort of moved towards committing that murder."

Natland was at the Briar Court Hotel with two handguns hidden under his bed when he was arrested by police.

When he saw officers at the door, he mimed shooting one of them with his hands before he was pushed against the wall and handcuffed.

Natland grew up in the oil city of Stavanger in south-west Norway.

Despite being a promising young footballer, he started taking drugs aged 13 and later dropped out of school.

He previously told the Old Bailey that by last year he was taking drugs "pretty much every day".

He became paranoid his parents were trying to kill him and he ended up in a psychiatric unit with drug-induced psychosis.

Natland's barrister, Paul Hynes KC, said the "mental illness was exacerbated, if not created, by the self-induced consumption of drugs", which had "affected his ability to make rational, good decisions".

The defendant said he spent a short period in a "home for problem children" where he met one of those who later recruited him to the Foxtrot Network, a teenager with the username UnknownHustler.

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