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Morocco’s General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) has helped the United States arrest a radicalized soldier before taking action.
U.S. Army private Cole Bridges was arrested last week while he was planning an attack on the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Bridges provided detailed diagrams and even training manuals to help ISIS fighters better kill American forces, according to US daily newspaper Newstalk Florida.
Bridges joined the U.S. Army in 2019 the same year that prosecutors say he began immersed in the propaganda of terrorist groups and a pledged supporter of jihadi terrorists. The young cavalry scout with the 3rd Infantry Division based at Fort Stewart, Georgia soon sought went public with his radical views. He began promoting these views online through social media and interacting on extremist forums, according to the same source.
The case was brought to the attention of the United States government in September 2020 by the Moroccan intelligence agency known as the General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance.
DGST, headed by Abdellatif Hammouchi, has worked closely with the United States on counter-terrorism efforts in the past and made the United States government aware of Bridges online activities, the same source explained, adding that from September until November 2020, Bridges was located at a U.S. military base in Germany.
Thanks to information provided by the DGST, Bridges began speaking online to someone he thought was in direct contact with ISIS fighters but, was, in fact, an online covert employee of the FBI.
Bridges stands accused of attempting to provide material support to ISIL and of attempting to murder U.S. military personnel. If convicted, each crime carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison though actual sentencing will be left to the judge.
