In a Stockholm suburb, a man in black appeared out of the winter night, carrying a handgun. He approached 20-year-old Murad Abdelkader, a student returning from a McDonald's shift, and fired repeatedly, shooting the last bullet into the victim's head as he lay on the ground.
The killer was identified as 18-year-old Atilla Azimov. He had killed the wrong man on a February night the previous year. Azimov carried out the killing for money, hired by an organised crime group known as the Foxtrot Network, which has links to the Iranian regime and is notorious for its violence-as-a-service (VaaS) tactics.
The Foxtrot Network is thought to have been responsible for about this many murders since 2022.
Targeting Iran's enemies
The Foxtrot Network has carried out attacks and attempted attacks on Israeli targets in Europe, including two involving explosives and hand grenades. Police believe some VaaS attacks were carried out for the Iranian regime, including a hand grenade attack on the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen; other attacks are part of Foxtrot's drugs turf wars.
Investigative journalist Diamant Salihu of Swedish broadcaster SVT, who has researched Foxtrot and its Iranian links for three years, said the Iranian regime is ordering Foxtrot's leader to instigate attacks against the regime's enemies, including dissidents, opposition journalists, and Israeli targets. Salihu said the links started after October 2023, when leader Rawa Majid fled to Tehran, and that Majid made a deal to live freely in Iran on condition that he and his network work for the regime.
A UK plot foiled
Johannes Natland, a Norwegian teenager, was convicted of conspiracy to murder by a jury at the Old Bailey in London on Wednesday for a planned killing in West Yorkshire, England. Natland, aged 18 at the time, was arrested in March 2025, the month before the UK government sanctioned Foxtrot and Majid, after flying in to carry out a hit for Foxtrot near Huddersfield.
Natland, the son of two journalists in Stavanger, Norway, had a comfortable upbringing but drifted into drugs and developed psychosis. He spent time in rehab and a short period in a children's home, where he met a teenager with the online handle UnknownHustler, who sent him an online request for a hit in the UK with the message 'Killing in England 270k' — about £21,000. The request originated from another teenager, Generalen, who was 16 at the time and had spent the last three years living in a children's home.
Killing in England 270k
Generalen subsequently recruited Natland and passed him on to a Foxtrot member with the username Agent 47, borrowed from the Hitman game franchise. Swedish police have accused Ali Shehad Ahmed, close to Foxtrot leader Majid, of being Agent 47. Agent 47 booked Natland's one-way ticket to Manchester Airport and helped him get an emergency passport, guided him via Signal, and handed him to a logistics man with the username '1'. The logistics man sent Natland a map and videos showing where to find guns hidden in woodland in Huddersfield and how to access a stash of cash near a foot tunnel.
We have much to do tomorrow.
Natland was arrested the next morning before being told who he was to kill. Counterterrorism detectives are trying to determine whether the planned killing was a criminal hit or a political one carried out for Iran.
Recruiting younger and younger
Generalen had also recruited at least two other people who carried out murders in Sweden: Azimov and a 17-year-old who shot dead Ahmed Zamzam in Lund. Azimov is serving a life sentence for killing the wrong man. Neither Azimov nor the 17-year-old got paid because they were caught, according to Salihu. 'They don't care at all if the teenagers get caught,' Salihu said, adding that Foxtrot has a deliberate policy to recruit younger and younger teenagers because they are more willing to take risks and don't consider the consequences.
Generalen was stopped because he was trying to arrange the murder of the 14-year-old son of a Norwegian police officer. He recruited a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old to carry out the knife attack, but the 15-year-old told the police. When Generalen was arrested, detectives found details of the Huddersfield murder plot on his phone, which led British police to arrest Natland just in time. Generalen was convicted in May and is serving a 14-year prison sentence.
Europol's response
According to Operational Taskforce (OTF) GRIMM, a Europol group set up to tackle the problem, teenage hitmen are recruited on social media and given instructions in a 'gamified' way imitating computer games. Andy Kraag, head of Europol's European Serious and Organised Crime Centre, described the scheme as 'calculated outsourcing of murder' to vulnerable young people. OTF GRIMM involves 11 countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
OTF GRIMM has made more than this many arrests in the 15 months since it was set up.
One of the most important arrests was that of Ali Shehad Ahmed, thought to be Agent 47. Ahmed was detained in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, and is subject to an extradition request to Sweden. Swedish deputy national police commissioner Stefan Hector said police are 'constantly expanding our co-operation with other countries' and showing organised criminals 'they cannot feel safe anywhere in the world'. In May, Mohamed 'Moewgli' Mohdhi, a former rapper, was arrested in Tunisia; Swedish police described him as a 'central actor' in Foxtrot.
Rawa Majid remains out of reach in Iran. Salihu said of him: 'He's still active,' and said he still fears attacks on the enemies of the Iranian regime as long as the network is active. It is not yet clear the extent to which the arrests have degraded Foxtrot's ability to operate. Other groups, including Foxtrot's rivals the Dalen Network, have adopted the VaaS method of recruiting vulnerable teenagers for murders. VaaS spread quickly from Sweden across Scandinavia and northern Europe and reached the UK last year.
