Johannes Natland, Foxtrot network hitman, sentenced to 20 years in Britain

Johannes Natland, a 19-year-old from Stavanger, Norway, was sentenced on Friday, 16 October 2026, to 20 years' detention for conspiracy to murder. British prosecutors say he came to England for the Foxtrot network, a Swedish criminal gang linked to the Islamic Republic and sanctioned by the United States and Britain, to kill a person in exchange for 25,000 euros.

A jury at London's Old Bailey had earlier convicted Natland of conspiracy to murder at a retrial; he had admitted from the outset possessing a prohibited firearm and ammunition without a certificate. The sentence was handed down by Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb. She told Natland that he had been recruited in Norway to travel to England and kill an unidentified person, and that he pursued the plan despite numerous opportunities to withdraw. Had the police not intervened, the judge said, he would have carried out the killing.

Arrest at a hotel in Huddersfield

Natland arrived at Manchester Airport on an emergency passport on 17 March 2025, and two days later, in the early hours of 19 March, armed police officers arrested him in a hotel room in Huddersfield. Officers found a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, 12 live rounds and £2,000 in cash in his room. The identity of the intended target has never been established.

According to the prosecution, a teenager using the alias "the General", who worked for Foxtrot, recruited Natland; that 17-year-old has been sentenced in Norway to 14 years in prison, and another 16-year-old is awaiting trial. Frank Ferguson, head of the Crown Prosecution Service's Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, called the case a calculated plan to kill for money.

Foxtrot: the Islamic Republic's criminal arm in Europe

The Foxtrot network, formed in Sweden in 2021, is known for drug trafficking and violent crime and recruits teenagers, and even children as young as 13, through social media. The United States and Britain have sanctioned the network for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets on behalf of the Islamic Republic. This pattern of hiring criminals and teenagers with no apparent link to Tehran allows the Islamic Republic to deny responsibility for the operations.

The sentence comes in a week in which European courts have repeatedly dealt with cases of the Islamic Republic's transnational repression, from the conviction of two Quds Force spies in Hamburg to the trial of the defendants in the plot to attack journalists in London.

The 19-year-old hitman sent to Britain to kill by a criminal network linked to the Islamic Republic has been jailed for 20 years.