BABY-FACED Johannes Natland left his middle-class parents’ comfortable home on the Norwegian coast “to play football with friends” – then the aspiring lawyer disappeared.
A heavy drug user, Natland — who had just turned 18 — told his then-girlfriend: “It will be a bit cool to really kill someone.”
Johannes Natland took a selfie showing £2,000 in cash spread across his hotel bed Credit: PA
Natland cocked his hands at the armed British police to mimic a gun Credit: PA
Days later, gun-toting cops hammered on the door of a Huddersfield hotel room 500 miles away in West Yorkshire.
In his underwear, at the armed British police officers to mimic a gun.
But this was no game. Pushing his face into the corridor wall, officers cuffed him and read him his rights.
Under the bed inside the room, they found a 9mm semi-automatic Luger pistol, a revolver, 12 rounds of live ammunition and £2,000 in cash.
On Wednesday an unknown target in the UK. He will be sentenced in October.
This bright and sporty youngster had been recruited online to be a teenage assassin by the Iranian-linked Foxtrot international crime syndicate.
His reward if successful? A blood money bounty of £21,000.
Natland’s mother, journalist Ellen Kongsnes said before her son’s trial that she found the turn of events “completely incomprehensible”.
She added: “It feels like a very bad movie, with a terribly bad script that doesn’t seem realistic at all.”
Yet Natland is one of hundreds of teens recruited across Scandinavia to maim and kill for ultra-violent criminal cartels like Foxtrot.
The Scandi child hoodlums have wreaked carnage in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and now the UK.
Over a four-month period in 2024 at least 25 Swedish youngsters on suspected contract-killing or bombing missions were arrested in Denmark.
Natland is one of hundreds of teens recruited across Scandinavia to maim and kill for ultra-violent criminal cartels Credit: AFP
Paying cash for a room in the Briar Court Hotel, Natland sent friends videos of himself with the guns. Credit: PA
. Long a standard bearer for liberal tolerance, the land of Ikea and ABBA seems from the outside an unlikely haven for teenage assassins.
been caught with automatic weapons, while nine-year-old boys act as street-corner lookouts for mobsters.
In one court case it emerged a 15-year-old, who committed murder for around £6,300 in cash, had written to a friend: “I shot I kill.”
The pal’s sickening response was: “Hahahahahaha. Head shot?”
So what attracts Swedish youngsters to the gangster world?
On a visit to capital Stockholm I met 6ft 2in Essa Sallah Kah. Using the street name Big Daddy or The Boss, he once ruled the 150-strong Chosen Ones mob.
Born in violence-ravaged Gambia, West Africa, his family moved to the gang-plagued Rinkeby estate where Essa became mob footsoldier aged just 12.
Powerfully built, he was soon acting as muscle for the area’s Yugoslav and Turkish gangs.
Foxtrot leader Rawa Majid, left, and Ali Shehab Ahmed in 2023 Credit: Central News
Rawa Majid, also known as the Kurdish Fox, has young footsoldiers specialised in contract killings and bombing rivals Credit: Swedish Police
He says: “They were drug dealers. They drove nice cars and people had respect for them.
“I wanted to prove that we blacks can do it too. The attitude was, ‘Don’t come and f*** around with us’.”
He began carrying guns — AK-47 assault rifles or Colt handguns — and robbing shops or acting as a menacing debt collector.
Big Daddy then established the Chosen Ones and wallowed in the trappings of gangster life.
Driving a , he and his retinue of bodyguards secured the best seats in Stockholm’s clubs, adding: “Wherever I went, I had a table. I didn’t stand in queues.” Reaching his 40s, he was a cocaine and amphetamine-addled, 36st mental and physical wreck.
Turning his back on his gangster life and finding God, the 53-year-old — now a social worker — told me: “People saw me as this dangerous guy, but I was anxious inside.
“None of the people who are doing this are happy.”
Yet the cartels — flooding social media with the lure of cash, notoriety and the high life — continue to attract wayward youth.
Essa Sallah Kah became mob footsoldier aged just 12 and acted as muscle for the area’s Yugoslav and Turkish gangs Credit: Dan Charity
Diamant Salihu said ‘There’s a consensus now that Sweden has failed with integration’ after the nation welcomed asylum seekers from the world’s trouble spots Credit: Dan Charity
The business model has been compared to the gig economy that employs drivers and delivery workers.
The gangsters — mostly adults — target children through , and .
The cash rewards can be irresistible for youngsters living in poverty.
Lobbing a grenade — often used as a crude warning to rival gangsters rather than to kill — is valued at around £4,000, while a murder can earn the perpetrator £12,000.
And it’s not just boys looking for street cred and social media likes — teenage girls in Sweden are touting themselves as hitwomen.
In May, a 12-year-old was convicted after she threw two live hand grenades at a door in Boras, near Gothenburg, last year.
Recruited on social media for cash, she travelled by bus with the devices concealed in her clothing to target relatives of a rival gangland figure.
The grenades failed to detonate. The girl faced no penalty or sentence because she is below 15 — Sweden’s age of criminal responsibility.
Sweden’s Justice minister Gunnar Strommer said: “Girls’ participation in criminal circles is much more widespread than we had previously assumed.”
Stockholm prosecutor Ida Arnell said last year: “I had a case involving a 15-year-old girl recruited to shoot someone in the head.
“She was able to choose the type of mission — to aim at the guy’s door or his head. She chose the head.”
The girl was arrested with a 17-year-old male accomplice, who ended up pulling the trigger. The victim was left clinging to life after a shower of bullets lodged in their neck, stomach and legs.
Bright youngster Ratland had been recruited online to be a teenage assassin by the Iranian-linked Foxtrot Credit: Central News
Natland’s mother, journalist Ellen Kongsnes, said before her son’s trial that she found the turn of events ‘completely incomprehensible’ Credit: Linkedin
The prosecutor added that girls “have to show that they are even more determined and tougher (than boys) to get the job.” Some 280 Swedish girls aged between 15 and 17 were charged with murder, manslaughter or other violent crimes in 2024. It is unclear how many were linked to organised crime.
In March, a 15-year-old girl was held in connection with the murder of two teenage boys, one from the southern city of Malmo and the other from the outskirts of Stockholm.
Astonishingly, a new trend shows children not yet in their teens are being recruited by Swedish gangs to conduct violent crime.
Ten children aged seven to 12 were arrested last year on suspicion of carrying out violent crimes for gangs.
Many youngsters come from Sweden’s immigrant communities. Famed for welcoming asylum seekers from the world’s trouble spots, politicians from all parties say Sweden has not managed to successfully integrate migrants.
Author and investigative reporter Diamant Salihu, 42, told me: “There’s a consensus now that Sweden has failed with integration.
“Germany has taken in a lot of migrants, but you don’t hear about child soldiers there.”
Much of the rise in Sweden’s teen gangsters traces back to the blood-thirsty cartel Foxtrot, which has links to the Iranian regime.
Its godfather, , was born in to Kurdish Iraqi parents before the family moved to Sweden.
Known as the Kurdish Fox, his young footsoldiers specialised in contract killings and bombing rivals. In 2023 Majid began a feud with one-time friend Ismail Abdo — nicknamed The Strawberry — who had become leader of rival gang Rumba.
Abdo’s mother was murdered at her home in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, by a 15 and 19-year-old. The violence soon spiralled.
In 2024 a string of attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets occurred.
There was a shooting outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. Then two Swedish teenagers aged 16 and 19 were arrested in Denmark after hand grenades were detonated near the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen.
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, alleged Majid was working with Iran and blamed both Foxtrot and Rumba for the attacks.
It was Foxtrot that later enticed Norwegian Natland. Recruited by a teen known by the internet alias UnknownHustler, the lad from Stavanger was sent a blunt tender for a prospective assassination.
On 15 March 2025, UnknownHustler forwarded him a message reading: “Killing in England 270k (270,000 Norwegian Kroner is about £21,000).
“Have transport ready out of the country. Will smuggle assassin out of the country.
“The police will be paid to look the other way. Nothing can go wrong.”
Natland was then added to a chat group that included a Stavanger-based recruiter named Generalen and another nicknamed Agent 47.
Agent 47 was Ali Shehab, a 22-year-old Swedish-Iraqi gangster and a senior recruiter for Foxtrot.
Natland’s first message to the group — named Assassin EU — was, “Who is to be killed?”
It’s unclear if he was ever told the answer. Just two days later, Natland flew on a one-way ticket from Stavanger to Manchester.
Taking a taxi to Huddersfield, his handlers directed him to where cash and firearms were concealed under rubbish and in woodland.
Paying cash for a room in the Briar Court Hotel, he sent friends videos of himself with the guns.
As the minutes ticked by before the hit, recruiter Generalen was arrested at Oslo airport. Cops found messages about a planned “assassination” in England on his phone.
At 5:15am on March 19 last year cops raided Room 207 at the Briar Court Hotel. Marching out, the green dots from the officers’ guns shone on Natland’s chest.
Foxtrot’s teenage hitman had been stopped. Yet there are seemingly many more ready to take his place.
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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