Norwegian teenager jailed for 20 years over UK murder plot after online recruitment
Johannes Natland, 19, was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court to detention for 20 years after being recruited online by the Foxtrot Network to carry out a murder in Britain.
A Norwegian teenager who flew to Britain to commit murder after being recruited online by a Swedish organised crime group linked to Iran has been jailed for 20 years.
Johannes Natland, now 19, was sentenced at London’s Woolwich Crown Court on Friday for conspiracy to murder, a charge he was convicted of in July. Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said she was sure Natland would have carried out the killing if police had not arrested him, and ordered that he serve at least 13 years in custody.
British prosecutors said Natland was recruited by the Foxtrot Network, which pays young people to carry out “violence as a service” for clients including the Iranian state. He had just turned 18 when he flew from Norway to Britain, having responded to an advert offering money to kill that claimed “nothing can go wrong”.
Natland had agreed to kill a target whose identity was never disclosed to him in return for 270,000 Norwegian kroner, about $28,600. He admitted possessing a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver and ammunition, but denied the conspiracy charge, claiming he never intended to carry out the plan and had considered shooting himself in the foot to escape it. Prosecutors said he was an enthusiastic recruit who boasted to a friend that “it will be cool to kill someone”.
The judge said: “This was not an impulsive act lasting a few moments … your conduct demonstrated purpose and persistence.”
Natland’s Norwegian lawyer Farid Bouras said the priority was now to bring him home and secure his transfer to Norway as quickly as possible.
Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said there was no evidence of any direct link to Iran in Natland’s case, and described it as a warning to those recruited as criminal proxies: “As Natland found, the people orchestrating these crimes will not protect you from the consequences.”
Britain says several recent cases have involved young adults acting as unwitting proxies for foreign states such as Iran or Russia. Britain and the United States allege Foxtrot was behind attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets on behalf of Iran, which denies the allegation.
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