A former US soldier was sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to provide information to the Islamic State (IS) group to help them attack US troops in the Middle East.
The sentence came after 24-year-old Cole Bridges, a Private First Class from Ohio, pleaded guilty last June to attempting to provide material support to a recognised foreign terrorist organisation and attempting to kill US military personnel.
“Cole Bridges used his US army training to pursue a horrifying goal: the brutal murder of his fellow service members in a carefully plotted ambush,” the Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams said in a press release. “Bridges sought to attack the very soldiers he was entrusted to protect and, making this abhorrent conduct even more troubling, was eager to help people he believed were members of a deadly foreign terrorist organisation plan this attack. This is a betrayal of the worst order.”
Court documents said that Bridges joined the Army about five years ago and was assigned as a cavalry scout to the Third Infantry Division based at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He later switched from consuming internet propaganda for jihad to trying to provide information to help IS, which once controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The Justice Department said that in October 2020, Bridges began communicating with an FBI employee posing as an IS supporter. Bridges told the undercover agent that he was frustrated with the US military and wanted to help IS.
“During these communications, Bridges expressed his frustration with the US military and his desire to aid IS,” the department said. He gave “training and guidance to purported Isis fighters who were planning attacks, including advice about potential targets in New York City,” according to a press release on his sentencing.
In December 2020, he began giving covert operational instructions so that suspected IS fighters would know how to attack US forces in the Middle East. Bridges also shared recommendations on how best to defend an IS stronghold in an attempt to attack US special forces, prosecutors said.
The instructions included how to supply buildings with explosives to kill soldiers. In early 2021, Bridges gave an undercover officer a video of him in his military body armour “standing in front of a flag often used by Isis fighters and making a gesture symbolic of support for Isis,” prosecutors said.
Bridges will face 10 years of supervised release after serving his sentence in federal prison.
