Former U.S. Soldier Is Sentenced to 14 Years for Planning to Help ISIS

A former soldier in the U.S. Army was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to provide ISIS with information to help plan an ambush he thought would result in the deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The soldier, Pvt. Cole Bridges, 24, of Stow, Ohio, also discussed potential locations for terrorist attacks in New York City with an undercover F.B.I. agent whom he believed to be a supporter of the Islamic State.

Private Bridges enlisted in the military in 2019 and joined an infantry division in Fort Stewart, Ga. Before enlisting, he had already been persuaded by radical ideologies, according to the Justice Department.

“Cole Bridges used his U.S. Army training to pursue a horrifying goal: the brutal murder of his fellow service members in a carefully plotted ambush,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

Beginning in at least 2019, Private Bridges began researching jihadist propaganda and posted his support for ISIS on social media. About a year after joining the Army, he began a correspondence with an F.B.I. agent who was posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with the group in the Middle East.

A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York detailed the soldier’s fervent intent on aiding the Islamic State, describing Private Bridges as “a supporter of ISIS and its mission to establish a global caliphate.”