Teenage Norwegian ‘hitman’ guilty of UK murder plot

Natland grew up in the oil city of Stavanger in southwestern Norway.

The son of two journalists and a promising young football player, he started using drugs at the age of 13.

He told the Old Bailey he used drugs “almost every day” last year.

He dropped out of school and ended up in a psychiatric clinic for drug-induced psychosis after becoming paranoid that his parents were trying to kill him.

He later said he spent a short time at a “home for troubled children” where he met a teenager with the username UnknownHustler, who later recruited him into the Foxtrot Network.

On March 15, 2025, UnknownHustler forwarded him a message, Foxtrot’s online business tender, known to the police as VaaS.

Foxtrot’s bid was blunt: “270,000 murders in England. Transport out of country ready. Will smuggle assassin out of country. Police will be paid to look the other way. Nothing can go wrong.” (270,000 Norwegian Krone is approximately £21,000.)

Natland was later added to a group consisting of Generalen and Agent 47. The band’s name was Assassin EU.

His first message to the group was “Who will be killed?”

It is unclear whether he received the answer to that question until the moment he was arrested with two guns under his bed in his hotel room.

The next day, March 16, Agent 47 booked Natland’s one-way flight to the United Kingdom.

On March 17, just two days after he was hired, Natland flew from Stavanger to Manchester using his emergency passport because his regular passport had expired.

On arrival in Manchester, he was detained and questioned due to UK Border Force officers’ suspicions about his lack of an emergency passport, money, hotel booking or return flight ticket.

They did not allow him entry, but since the return flight to Stavanger did not take three days, they still allowed him to enter temporarily. The contract hit was still ongoing.