A TEENAGE assassin came to Britain to carry out a gangland hit after being recruited online by an Iran-backed Scandi crime group.
Johannes Kongsnes Natland, 19, has been found guilty of travelling to the UK from Norway to carry out a “hit” for money.
A court was told the talented footballer had been tasked by Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organised crime group used by the Iranian regime.
His plan was thwarted when police came to his hotel room and found a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, and 12 rounds of live ammunition, the court was told.
Natland had denied conspiring to murder an unknown person but admitted possession of the two firearms and ammunition.
He was convicted of conspiracy to murder at the Old Bailey today as his journalist parents watched from the public gallery.
The group recruited boys as young as 13 on the internet and at children’s homes and were used by the Iranian regime to carry out attacks on Israeli targets.
It can now be revealed how the Foxtrot Network’s leader Rawa Majid, 39, nicknamed the Kurdish Fox, fled to Iran three years ago.
The UK and US sanctioned Majid and the Foxtrot Network last year for violence against Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe on behalf of Iran’s foreign intelligence agency.
Talented footballer and school drop-out Natland, from Norway’s south-western city Stavanger, was working part-time at a pizza shop when he was approached by the crime group through encrypted app Signal.
Two boys – one aged 15 and calling himself “Unknown Hustler” and the other Lennon Junger, 16, using the name Generalen – offered Natland 25,000 Euros (£21,600) to fly to the UK to carry out a murder.
He received instructions from a senior group member Ali Shehab Ahmed, 22, who used the handle “Agent 47” – the name of a character in a video game called Hitman.
The court heard he told an on-off girlfriend: “I’m going on a crazy mission.”
Prosecutor Alastair Richardson told the Old Bailey jury that he “neither knew, nor cared, who he was to kill”.
Natland then flew from Norway to Manchester Airport on March 17, arriving that evening.
This is despite being warned on his way to the airport that Generalen had been arrested that day after a 13-year-old told his mother he had tried to recruit him for a murder.
Natland was questioned for more than eight hours at the airport because he had a one-way ticket, hardly any money and no hotel booked.
When quizzed by Border Force officers over concerns surrounding his age and lack of money, he told them that he had arrived to the city to visit his gamer friends and see tourist landmarks.
The following day, Natland was directed to collect the guns and ammunition from a wooded area and messaged his girlfriend to say: “In the bag is bang.”
He also bought rubber gloves and lined up a car, the prosecutor told jurors.
Natland was arrested in a hotel in Huddersfield with two guns, cash and ammo days after arriving in Britain in March 2025.
Police found a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, and 12 rounds of live ammunition in his possession, it was heard.
Bodycam footage played to jurors showed armed police arresting Natland at Briar Court Hotel.
Officers banged loudly on his hotel room door on March 19 last year, saying: “It’s the police, come to the door.”
He emerged wearing only boxer shorts and turned towards one of the officers, imitating holding a firearm and pretending to shoot the officer, before he was pushed against the wall and handcuffed.
He turned to one of the officers and held his hands up, imitating holding a gun and pretending to shoot him with his empty hands.
Another cop immediately took hold of the teen’s left hand, put him against the wall and arrested him on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.
Asked if there were any weapons in his room, he shook his head slightly.
The footage also captured an exchange with one of the officers in which a smiling Natland asked if he was “happy”, saying in Norwegian: “That was fun, like.”
Jurors heard a 17-year-old youth was convicted in Norway last May of attempting “to contribute to murder” by recruiting Natland to shoot an unknown person in England.
Three more people had been charged by Norwegian police with a decision yet to be taken by prosecutors whether to “indict” them, it was said.
Police searching Natland’s room recovered £2,000 in notes from the bed and desk, three pairs of nitrile gloves, a semi-automatic pistol, 17 bullets, of which 12 were viable, and a rusted revolver.
Natland was taken to Huddersfield police station where he spoke to a nurse about his history of cannabis use.
While waiting to be taken back to a cell after his police interview, the teen gesticulated with his finger to an officer and said: “Sneaky sneaky.”
He was charged with firearms offences the next day.
The teenager behind the account “UnknownHustler” and two others have been charged by the police in Norway with conspiracy to murder an unknown person in Britain.