On March 15 last year, 18-year-old Johannes Natland sent a message to his girlfriend in a fit of excitement which said: 'I'm going on a crazy mission.'

Two days later, he left home in Stavanger, south-west Norway, telling his mother he was going to play football.

He instead flew to Manchester before collecting a 9mm semi-automatic Luger pistol, a revolver, 12 rounds of live ammunition and £2,000 in cash.

It turned out 'crazy' was somewhat of an understatement.

Natland's mission had been to assassinate a target on behalf of an Iranian-backed Swedish gang – for £21,000.

He was arrested in a hotel room in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, hours before he was due to carry out the hit.

It seemed implausible. The baby-faced teenager came from a middle-class home in a safe town enriched by North Sea oil. He was a bright student, talented footballer and aspiring lawyer.

But in a two-week trial at the Old Bailey, jurors heard how Natland – while not quite 'a hitman from a Hollywood movie' – was precisely the type of vulnerable teenager preyed upon by Europe's most menacing gang, the Foxtrot Network.

He was on Wednesday convicted of conspiracy to murder following a retrial, after the original jury failed to reach a verdict.

Yet some of the most astonishing facts have not been made public – until now.

The Daily Mail can reveal Natland, now 19, was in contact with a senior Foxtrot recruiter. This is Swedish-Iraqi gangster Ali Shehab, 22, known as 'Agent 47' – a name taken from video game Hitman.

Shehab is a close ally of the Foxtrot boss who allegedly struck a deal with Iran to target the state's enemies abroad.

The gang has wreaked havoc across Scandinavia in recent years, but this case is believed to be its first on UK soil. It offers a worrying window into how Iranian proxy gangs are waging a war of terror across Europe.

Natland, the son of two journalists and youngest of three siblings, grew up in genteel surroundings. Stavanger, a town of around 150,000, has reaped the rewards of North Sea oil. High-end boutiques, cafes and restaurants tumble down its slopes to the shores of a fjord.

But when asked in court for his opinion on his hometown, Natland had a rather less glowing review. 'Football is really the only thing to do there. All I know is it is quite a [expletive] city,' he said.

As boredom set in, Natland 'started to experiment'. He began smoking cannabis at 13 and later graduated to ecstasy, LSD, cocaine and heroin.

Aged 17, he became convinced his parents were trying to kill him so locked himself in his brother's bedroom with a kitchen knife.

He spent time in a psychiatric unit and a children's care home. There, he met another teenage boy who went by the online alias 'Unknown Hustler'. Natland was 'in recovery' when he received a sinister message from the boy. It made reference to a 'japping' – Norwegian slang for murder – in England for a bounty of 270,000 Norwegian Kroner (£21,000).

The message said the 'assassin' would be smuggled out of the country, adding: 'Nothing can go wrong.' Minutes later, Natland was added to a group chat with a Stavanger-based recruiter called 'Generalen' and Shehab.

In a message to the latter, Generalen claimed Stavanger provided 'assassin after assassin'. In court, Natland said he thought it was 'a joke'. But messages suggest he took it deadly seriously.

Natland asked: 'Who is to be shot?' Just over an hour later, he messaged his girlfriend, Sara Solbi, about his 'crazy mission'.

Giving evidence, Ms Solbi, 19, said Natland told her: 'Now I can finally kill someone and it's perfect. I get money to do it.'

On March 17, Natland flew to Manchester with an emergency passport. He had just £40 in cash, a mobile phone and a small bag of clothes. He was denied entry due to doubts over his age and funds. But there were no flights back to Stavanger that day, so Natland was allowed into the UK and told to return on March 21.

Throughout this time, he had been receiving direct instructions from Shehab. Once in England, he was handed over to another agent, likely based in this country.

Natland took a taxi to Huddersfield, where he was directed to a wood in which the guns, ammunition and cash were stashed.

He then checked in to Briar Court Hotel, where double rooms go for £120 per night.

Natland sent his girlfriend a picture of himself smiling while holding a pistol, with the message: 'Soon it will happen'.

What he didn't know was that authorities were already on to him. On March 15, Norwegian police intercepted a message in which Generalen discussed a 'mission in Europe'. Generalen was arrested at Oslo airport two days later in connection with another plot.

At around the same time, a teacher and classmate of Natland both contacted police after he told friends outside a house party he was involved with 'the Foxes', an apparent reference to the criminal Foxtrot network. 'I am going to get a lot of money, someone is going to die,' he had boasted.

Late on March 18, Norwegian investigators traced Natland to Huddersfield. At 5.15am the next day, armed police arrested him.

Natland admitted possession of the firearms but denied conspiracy to murder. He told the court he planned to sabotage the mission by literally shooting himself in the foot. And the defendant said he boasted about the situation to look 'cool' but didn't back out earlier because he was 'terrified' Foxtrot would kill him.

He pleaded that he was not 'a cold blooded professional hitman like Liam Neeson [from the film Taken]', but 'a drug addict'.

Yet prosecutor Alistair Richardson said Natland was 'just the sort of person Foxtrot recruits'.

Swedish journalist and Foxtrot expert Diamant Salihu told the Daily Mail that Shehab 'has been one of the most important recruiters for Foxtrot in recent years'.

The group is led by Swedish-Iraqi national Rawa Majid, 39, known as 'the Kurdish Fox', who rules the Scandinavian drug trade. Foxtrot has been linked to attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets across Europe.

Norwegian prosecutors told the Mail that Foxtrot had 'bought' pre-existing Telegram or Signal groups packed with youngsters to recruit children as young as 13 for missions. The largest group, which has since been closed, was called 'Samurai Kids' and had up to 11,000 members.

Foxtrot has a strict hierarchy. At the top are the 'instigators', who order the crime and finance it. In Natland's case, this was Agent 47. Beneath them sit recruiters such as Generalen.

At the bottom are the 'enforcers' – teenagers who, as Natland said, just wanted to be someone.

Crucially, they are rarely told who their target is until the last moment. Natland was arrested before learning of his. It is not known who the intended victim was. What is known is that Iran is increasingly outsourcing attacks.

In December, Shehab was arrested in Iraq in an operation to disrupt 'assassination missions'. He is suspected to have been behind 23 attempted murders and five murders.

'Generalen', who is only 17, was convicted in Norway of multiple counts of accessory to murder and accessory to attempted murder for plots in Sweden, Norway, and Natland's case in Huddersfield.

For Natland's mother, Ellen Kongsnes, all this is still scarcely believable. She said before the first trial that his arrest was 'completely incomprehensible'.

'It feels like a very bad movie, with a terribly bad script that doesn't seem realistic at all,' she added.

Sadly, it is only too real. And, with a lengthy sentence likely, it has anything but a happy ending.

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