Arlington 18-year-old pleads guilty to recruiting for terrorist group

An Arlington 18-year-old pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal terrorism charge after he was accused of grooming a would-be recruit to join a terrorist group and arranging to get him to Pakistan.

Michael Kyle Sewell was arrested in February and pleaded guilty Wednesday morning before federal Magistrate Judge Jeffrey L. Cureton in Fort Worth.

Sewell was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based foreign terrorist organization also known as LeT.

According to Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Sewell admitted encouraging a person identified in court documents as “Co-conspirator 1” to join the group.

Sewell provided the co-conspirator with contact information for someone he believed could facilitate the recruit’s travel to Pakistan. But the facilitator was an undercover FBI agent, Nealy Cox said.

Scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 12, Sewell faces as much as 20 years in federal prison and a fine of as much as $250,000.

The FBI was assisted by the Arlington and Fort Worth police departments, Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, Homeland Security Investigations and the Texas Department of Public Safety.