Norwegian teenager given 20 years’ detention over UK murder plot

Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court on 16 October 2026. A jury had convicted him of conspiracy to murder at the Old Bailey in July, following a retrial. He had already pleaded guilty to firearms and ammunition offences. [2] [6]

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said Natland had agreed to kill a stranger for the Foxtrot Network in a commission arranged online. She said it mattered that nobody had been shot or physically harmed, but she was sure he would have carried out the plan had police not intervened. [6]

Natland flew from Norway to Manchester on 17 March 2025. Officers arrested him two days later at a hotel in Huddersfield, where they found a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver and ammunition. The Crown Prosecution Service said messages on his phone showed he had been offered €25,000 to carry out the killing. The intended victim has never been identified. [2] [3]

At trial, Natland denied intending to kill anyone. He said he had planned to shoot himself in the foot to get out of the assignment. An earlier jury had been unable to reach a verdict, but the jury at his retrial found him guilty. [3] [7]

The Sweden-based Foxtrot Network was placed on a US sanctions list as a transnational criminal organisation in March 2025 and listed under the UK’s Iran financial sanctions regime the following month. The US Treasury says the network carried out an attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm in January 2024 on Iran’s behalf. Those measures concern the network, not an established Iranian role in Natland’s plot. [4] [5] [8]

Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said investigators had found “no evidence of any direct link to Iran in this case”. [6]