U.S. Army sentenced for trying to help Islamic State plot attack against troops

Cole Bridges pleaded guilty last year to charges of attempting to provide material to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members.

Coles is 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 deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

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

Bridges originally pleaded guilty to terrorism charges on June 14,2023, but his sentence was handed down this week, Officials said.

“Before he joined the Army, beginning in at least 2019, Bridges began researching and consuming online propaganda promoting jihadists and their violent ideology, and began to express his support for ISIS and jihad on social media,” the DOJ said. “In or about October 2020, approximately one year after joining the Army, Bridges began communicating with an FBI online covert employee (the OCE), who was posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with ISIS fighters in the middle east.”

It was during these communications that Bridges expressed his frustration with the U.S. military and his desire to help ISIS, officials said.

“Bridges then provided training and guidance to purported ISIS fighters who were planning attacks, including advise about potential targets in New York city. Bridges also provided the OCE with portions of a U.S. Army training manual and guidance about military combat tactics, with the understanding that the materials would be used by the ISIS in future attack planning.”

Bridges also provided the OCE with a video of himself in his U.S. Army body armor standing in front of a flag often used by ISIS fighters and making a gesture symbolic of support for ISIS in January 2021, authorities said, and even sent a second video a week later where he reportedly used a voice manipulator to read a propaganda speech in support of the anticipated ambush by ISIS on U.S. troops.