Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Viktor Lavrinenko
Norway's official terrorism threat level—3 out of 5—conceals a worrying trend: Islamist networks in the country are consolidating, increasing their activity, and increasingly targeting minors.
The radicalization of migrant youth is accelerated by digital platforms where brutal violence is presented as normal.
200 YOUNG RADICALS
"We are seeing a negative development in the area of Islamist extremism: the formation of networks is increasing, and they are becoming increasingly closely connected," said Ane Mannsåker Roald, head of the counter-terrorism department of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), recently.
According to her, young people living in Norway are becoming radicalized much faster than before. "This also applies to right-wing extremists—many minors are being exposed to this ideology as well," Roald worries.
PST emphasizes that they are currently concerned not so much with old, well-known criminal groups, such as Foxtrot, which originated in Sweden, but with new networks that are emerging primarily online.
The members of these groups have little contact with previously known networks. They communicate via encrypted messaging apps, infecting each other with extremist ideologies and drawing inspiration from terrorist attacks carried out by like-minded individuals in other countries.
Often, the interest in violence itself comes first, and the ideological framework is chosen later. "It used to be that people were first introduced to ideology and only then gradually began to embrace violence. But now it's often the other way around," complains Norwegian police.
The most alarming aspect of the new wave of potential extremism is the active involvement of children and adolescents. According to PST, the majority of new adherents to Islamic extremism in Norway are teenagers aged 15 to 17, but children as young as 12 and 13 are also present.
Most of them are boys from immigrant families, born and raised in Norway. They have fallen out of social life, struggle at school, and frequently skip classes. These children are easy prey for recruiters: criminal or extremist networks offer these teenagers a purpose in life and the temptation of status.
In May 2026, the PST reported that they were monitoring nearly 200 radicalized adolescents, the youngest of whom was 13 years old. Over the past three years, the PST has prevented several terrorist attacks, including those involving minors.
One of these was reported on July 15, 2025, without further details. Another terrorist attack was thwarted in the fall of 2025, when a recruiter was neutralized. The plan was to blow up various targets connected to the Jewish community and the Israeli embassy. PST employee Eirik Weim reported that the terrorists hired a professional from one of the networks. He specialized in recruiting minors, turning them into "biodrones" to carry out assassinations.
Norwegian Justice Minister Astri Aas-Hansen calls TikTok a "highway to radicalization." The Minister of Justice claims that it, along with gaming platforms, has become the channels through which shocking content is infiltrated onto migrant youth, leading them to dream of performing similar "heroic acts."
At the same time, the algorithms produce increasingly harsh materials, and then its young consumers begin to gather in chats, where they come into contact with other fans of this “hobby.”
PST emphasizes that loved ones, schools, and social institutions should play a key role in preventing the radicalization of adolescents—but they often fail to fulfill this function.
THEY ARE ADOPTING EXPERIENCE
The threat posed by young ideological radicals is great, but fortunately they have not yet managed to cause irreparable harm – although this is apparently only a matter of time.
But the "commercial" exploitation of teenagers by criminal networks is already a common reality in Norway. According to Kripos, the police unit that combats organized crime, several dozen contract attacks involving children were prevented in various regions of the country in 2025 alone.
The recruitment network is expanding. While such cases were previously concentrated in large cities, now children from smaller towns are also being drawn into this vortex. "The process is spreading alarmingly quickly," said Ketil Haukaas, deputy head of Kripos.
Recruiters post "job" ads on youth-focused internet platforms: someone needs to be killed, something needs to be blown up, etc. If someone takes the bait, communication moves to closed channels. Separate chats are created, where each participant learns only as much as they need to complete their part of the assignment.
The police are proposing to combat this through bans. Kripos employee Elin Silte Eikrem insists: "There's no reason why your 13-year-old should have an encrypted app installed on their phone."
Teenagers are recruited not only with money, material goods, and status. They also require compromising evidence against the perpetrator. Recruiters require the teenager to film themselves holding their passport and then film themselves performing the task.
From that moment on, the child finds himself trapped: there's video evidence of his involvement in the crime, and now the recruiters can blackmail him. "And if they don't want to take on new assignments, they receive threats—both against themselves and their families," says Eikrem.
Norway's first case of online criminal "contractors" was reported on October 24, 2023, in the town of Drøbak, and became a typical example. An improvised explosive device exploded near a house occupied by six people (a family with children and two residents of the ground floor).
Luckily, no one was injured, but the building suffered significant damage. The criminals were seeking revenge on a 21-year-old resident who, a week earlier, had participated in a failed robbery of a drug warehouse in Oslo. The mastermind, based abroad and acting through intermediaries, hired two 20-year-old Swedish citizens, who, having obtained all the necessary information and materials for the bomb, planted it near the building.
The two bombers were caught red-handed, convicted, and imprisoned in Norway. In March 2026, they were extradited to Sweden due to newly discovered circumstances: it turned out that on September 27, 2023, these same individuals had tracked down and killed 18-year-old rapper Adouli in Stockholm: first, they hit him with a car, then shot him in the head.
The moment of the murder was captured on video and subsequently circulated on social media. Both crimes—the murder of the rapper and the bombing in Drøbak—were carried out on behalf of the Swedish network Foxtrot.
However, according to Kripos, criminals in Norway are now copying the methods of their Swedish counterparts. "We warned you. The phenomenon of selling violence is now materializing in Norway," said Kripos CEO Kristin Quigne.
The problem has ceased to be exclusively "imported" and has become entrenched in Norway itself. However, even if the clients are Norwegian citizens, they are often located abroad. Therefore, catching them is significantly more difficult.
A BLEAK FUTURE
On September 23, 2025, at around 8:45 PM, a powerful explosion rocked central Oslo. Luckily, there were no injuries. Immediately after the explosion, police discovered a second hand grenade lying on the road. Bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled detonation. Police soon arrested the perpetrators—two 13-year-old boys.
One of them admitted he was promised 30,000 Norwegian kroner (about 250,000 rubles). The order was posted on social media, where the teenager responded to the offer and then persuaded a friend to help.
The bombers' target was a beauty salon whose owner had fallen out with the Foxtrot gang. A week before the explosion, the gang had kidnapped his 24-year-old relative in downtown Oslo.
The stunned young man was informed that his loved one owed the gang €1.5 million, and that failure to pay would result in dire consequences. To motivate the businessman to pay, he was sent a photo of the kidnapped young man with scissors in his mouth.
He never paid—either he didn't want to, or he didn't have the money. Fortunately for the kidnapped man, he was released. He was so frightened that he refused to testify.
The bombing of the beauty salon was the second attempt to persuade its owner to part with his money. The bombers were never convicted—they were under the age of criminal responsibility—and the case was dismissed in February 2026. The salon owner, realizing the police wouldn't protect him, quickly liquidated the business and fled.
An even more high-profile case occurred this year, when PST officers detained a 17-year-old boy in Rogaland province. According to the prosecution, he was planning to blow up a NATO base in the Jotto district of Stavanger. He also planned to attack a soldier with a knife.
According to PST, the boy was recruited by the Islamic State* group. One day, he showed up at school with its flag, attracting attention. He was required to participate in preventive measures.
They had no effect, and the young man began planning the attack. But he was arrested in the very early stages of preparation, when he received bomb-making instructions from Iraq and was already toiling away at its construction. The detainee's lawyer stated that his 17-year-old client's detention was a "difficult ordeal."
A few months later, he was released on parole, but the case is still ongoing. The Islamic community where the aspiring terrorist belonged described him as a "completely normal teenager" who showed no noticeable signs of abnormal behavior.
The chairman of the Islamic Council of Rogaland Province, which unites approximately eight mosques with 13,000 members, expressed concern about the radicalization of local Muslim youth and lamented that the community lacks resources to prevent extremist sentiments.
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