A 19-year-old Norwegian man has been found guilty of agreeing to kill someone in the UK for money. A court in London called the Old Bailey convicted Johannes Kongsnes Natland, from the Norwegian city of Stavanger, after a jury spent more than 17 hours deciding the verdict. He had agreed to shoot an unidentified person in exchange for €25,000 (about £21,500) (The Guardian).

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, the judge, sent Natland back to prison to wait for his sentencing, which is set for October 2026.

This was actually Natland's second trial. In the first one, the jury could not agree on a verdict, so the judge ordered a new trial (BBC). The second jury found him guilty.

Natland was 18 when he was arrested on March 19, 2025 (BBC). He had flown from Stavanger to Manchester Airport on March 17, 2025, using a temporary passport. Border Force officers stopped him at the airport and told him to take the next flight home. Instead, Natland took a taxi to Huddersfield, a town in northern England (The Guardian).

In Huddersfield, Natland collected £2,000 in cash, two guns, and ammunition. Armed police arrested him in his hotel room two days after he arrived. They found a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, and 19 rounds of ammunition. (BBC reporting earlier in the case said 12 rounds were found, while The Guardian's more recent reporting says 19 (BBC; The Guardian).) During his arrest, Natland pretended to shoot at the police officers (BBC).

The investigation was led by the counter-terrorism unit of London's Metropolitan Police, the UK's largest police force. Officers found evidence that Natland knew he had been asked to kill someone in the UK. The person he was supposed to kill has never been identified.

Natland's own text messages helped the prosecution. He texted his girlfriend before the planned attack: "I'm going on crazy mission" and "It will be a bit cool to kill someone. If I don't get caught we have to celebrate." During the trial, Natland told the court he "got into a pickle" over the plot (BBC). At the time, he was working part-time in a pizza restaurant.

The prosecutor, Alistair Richardson, called Natland "a troubled but dangerous young man" who agreed to kill in a foreign country for money (The Guardian).

The most important detail in this case is who reportedly recruited Natland. According to The Guardian, he was recruited by the Foxtrot Network, a Swedish organised crime group that has links to the Iranian government (The Guardian).

The broader context here is that over the past several years, European security services have seen a growing number of cases where Iran has used criminal groups to carry out violent attacks on European soil. Instead of sending its own agents, Iran reportedly hires intermediaries — middlemen who do the work — so that the Iranian government can deny any involvement. The Natland case fits this pattern clearly: a teenager with no history of terrorism, sent from Scandinavia to northern England, armed and funded through local criminal contacts, and directed at a target that was never identified.

Using a teenager as the person carrying out the attack is notable on its own. A younger person attracts less attention from security services, which makes the plot harder to detect. But it also creates risks. Natland was stopped at Manchester Airport, and he could not keep the mission secret, even texting his girlfriend about it. Still, the Border Force officers who stopped him let him go, only requiring him to return home. He took a taxi to his contact instead, showing a gap between the initial suspicion and a stronger intervention that might have stopped him from reaching Huddersfield.

The fact that the counter-terrorism unit, rather than a regular murder investigation team, handled the case shows how UK authorities viewed the threat. They treated the plot as connected to terrorism, which fits with the reported link to Iran through the Foxtrot Network.

The plot was stopped before anyone was hurt, and the intended victim was never identified. But the conviction creates an official court record of how the operation worked: recruitment in Scandinavia, weapons and logistics in the UK, and a chain of connections running from a Swedish crime group to a foreign government. When Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb sentences Natland in October, she will decide whether to treat this as a regular contract killing or as something more serious. The charge of conspiracy to murder can carry a sentence of life in prison.