Teen with Islamic State ties accused of planning attack on Coeur d’Alene churches claims he was self-radicalized
The Spokesman-Review (archive.ph)
By Emma Epperly, Alexandra Duggan, and Elena Perry
2024-04-09 18:11:55GMT
Alexander Mercurio is shown in this booking photo from the Kootenai County Jail. (Courtesy)
Like thousands of students, Alexander Mercurio spent his time during COVID browsing online.
Unlike most students, the Coeur d’Alene teenager ended up in the dark corners of the internet. And for a time, he “drank the Kool-aid” of white supremacy before turning to an extremist view of Islam, and eventually the terrorist group known as the Islamic State group, according to federal criminal charges filed against him on Monday.
“I’m 17 in USA … I know I try to keep secret, I’m in north Idaho very Christian and conservative parents are mad cause I’m not shaving beard and not letting pants go below ankle,” he wrote in October 2022..
Mercurio messaged online with terrorist supporters, eventually coming up with a plan to hit his father with a metal pipe, take his guns and attack nearby churches in Coeur d’Alene, the complaint alleges.
As the holy month of Ramadan drew to a close, Mercurio selected a specific church that he planned to attack on Sunday. He wrote a statement pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State and his plan to kill himself during the attack.
The plot never had a chance. The FBI foiled his plans and arrested him hours before the planned attack after spending months tracking Mercurio through informants and surveillance. The case was serious enough that it merited the attention of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
‘It’s justified’
Dressed in a red and white jumpsuit Tuesday, Mercurio was unapologetic about his plans during an interview at the Kootenai County Jail.
Mercurio said he was a normal kid with friends until the last three years of high school when he isolated himself while doing school online.
That’s when he found Islam.
“I radicalized myself through that,” he said, squinting frequently. “The purpose is revenge. It’s an eye for an eye.”
Initially, he was interested in more mainstream Islam, but then began reading posts about how Western Christian countries voted for politicians who will interfere in predominately Muslim countries and attack civilians, he said.
“It’s retribution,” he said. “If our people will be slaughtered, it should happen to you.”
He continued praying and studying, Mercurio said, and eventually began to support terrorist groups like Al Queda. In the interview Tuesday, Mercurio praised Osama Bin Laden.
He said his planned attack had nothing to do with race but instead religion, and that he hoped to target all non-Muslims.
“It’s justified,” Mercurio said.
Mercurio said he was coming home from his job at Walmart when two FBI agents introduced themselves to him, eventually telling him they knew about his plan and arresting him.
Mercurio said the charge he faces don’t scare him.
“It’s a consequence if I got caught,” he said. “The point was to kill until I was killed.”
Mercurio’s self-radicalization is not abnormal following the COVID-19 pandemic. A United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute report found that terrorist and violent extremist groups tried to take advantage of the pandemic to expand their activities and recruit people . Terrorist groups like the Islamic State group and others used conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19 to draw people into other ideologies, like saying the virus is a “solider of Allah” punishing unbelievers, the report says.
Research published 2015 in a study sponsored by the Department of Justice’s Domestic Radicalization to Terrorism program points to four stages of self-radicalization concluding in acts of violence.
The first stage, pre-radicalization, paves the way cognitively for an individual to align with radical beliefs. This can include dissatisfaction with world affairs or authorities, a personal crisis or seeking information from new authority figures.
The second stage is detachment, a transition from one’s previous in-person life toward increasing time spent engaging with extremists online. This can include personifying online figures in one’s real life, seeking approval from new authority figures, lifestyle changes such as dropping out of school or work and attempting to convert others to their extremist views.
Immersion is the third stage, which involves attempts to commit oneself to the cause, potentially involving moving abroad, marrying someone in the extremist community or learning new skills a terrorist group may find advantageous, like firearm use.
The final stage is taking action, perhaps enlisting in a terrorist group, threatening people, taking steps to carry out violence or committing acts of violence under the group’s cause.
Online messages turn to real world plans
The FBI began tracking Mercurio’s activity in group chats full of Islamic State supporters as early as 2022. Those chats included confidential informants who reported Mercurio’s increasingly specific plans to kill himself and others, documents say.
Mercurio told people in chats that his parents were Christian and unsupportive of his Muslim faith. His parents, who divorced in 2019, pushed him to go back to in-person school, he said.
“Ok brother it was calm for a couple days, now its serious. They’re sending me to in-person school again, more therapy, more stuff like that etc etc, probably not coming back any time soon,” he wrote in October 2022.
A few days later, Mercurio said his parents’ plans had expanded to potentially sending him away to a program.
“My parents want me to stop being Muslim and praying and drop everything 100 percent tomorrow or they take away absolutely everything and send me to in-person school to make sure I don’t pray or if that doesn’t work send me to youth camp or juvenile hall or something IDK please I just don’t know what to do this will probably be my last message in a long while,” he wrote three days later.
In an interview Tuesday, Mercurio said his parents divorced in 2019 because of dysfunction on both ends. Both of his parents didn’t like his online interests and tried to redirect him, Mercurio said.
Mercurio’s school computer contained more than 50 audio files of chants and songs glorifying the Islamic State group, and the FBI matched his IP address to social media profiles affiliated with Islamic State causes, according to the complaint. He told people in the group chats that his parents were continuing to discourage his faith and that he wanted to be more involved.
In February, he sent messages about wanting to go fight on the front lines, the document said, but saying money might force him to “just do a home op.”
“I can’t say I tried to make her accept me, because she always hated my religion from day one,” Mercurio wrote, according to the complaint. “I still hold a big grudge against my parents for what they have and continue to do to me.”
In late March, he allegedly began planning an attack, as documented in messages to the informants and recorded at in-person meetings.
He wrote that there are “three or five churches within walking distance of me so targeting those ones isn’t hard. The others are farther away, I’d have to hijack a car and drive over,” he wrote.
He allegedly told the informants he was “considering” killing his father, who was always home due to a disability, but that his family was giving him less of a hard time because his grades were good and he was keeping his religion to himself.
On April 1, allegedly Mercurio announced his plans to kill people at a specific church near his house. He met up with an informant in person a few times that week, including once to buy a metal pipe he planned to hit his dad with.
Throughout the week before the attack, documents say he uploaded information from Islamic State sources to the group chat. That’s when an informant asked for photos and details of the plan. On April 6, he uploaded a recorded final message. At about noon the same day, the FBI searched the Mercurio family home.
Agents found a toolbox in Mercurio’s closet with an Islamic State flag and materials to carry out the attack, including a machete, according to the complaint. Mercurio’s father allegedly had guns locked in his bedroom closet, including an AR-15 that Mercurio planned to steal and use in the attack.
Mercurio was arrested and booked into the Kootenai County Jail on suspicion of attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He has yet to be assigned a public defender, according to court records. The FBI declined to comment further on Mercurio’s arrest.
On Tuesday, Mercurio said he hopes his parents understand his actions and that he loves them.
Withdrawn, isolated teen
Lake City tenth-grader Maddox Ramey recognized Mercurio’s face when he heard the news Tuesday morning, though they’d never talked. The threats to unspecified local churches disturbed him; his mom worships at a church right across the street from the high school.
“I’m still going to church; I’m not going to let a punk little kid bother that,” he said.
While he didn’t know Mercurio, he reasoned that he may have been a loner seeking connection, leading to his radicalization. According to the affidavit, Mercurio told an informant that he had once engaged in white supremacy, but found “more purpose” in the Islamic State group .
“He probably didn’t have a lot of friends, like, I’m not just saying that, he probably found a group online to reside with, and maybe they were ISIS members so he decided to join,” Maddox said, using a common abbreviation for the Islamic State.
Lake City Senior Landon Burt had one class with Mercurio and recalls him withdrawing from his peers until he eventually stopped coming to class, Burt said.
Before graduating last year, Mercurio spent his last two years of high school taking online school, according to Coeur d’Alene Public Schools spokesperson Stephany Bales.
“I just never got to know him too well,” Burt said. “I’m pretty sure that anyone who tried to get to know him, he was just very closed-off, very shy.”
Burt knew Mercurio to be reclusive, but not malicious.
“It never seemed like he would do something like that. He never seemed like a person of bad intentions in this world,” he said. “I hope that he didn’t do those things, but you never know a person unless you talk to them. And I never got the chance to talk to him.”
Reporter Elena Perry contributed to this report.
This story is developing.
Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
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Teen arrested day before he planned to attack churches in name of ISIS, feds say
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Ben Brasch
2024-04-09 22:57:47GMT
Alexander Scott Mercurio in front of a flag of the Islamic State militant group. He was arrested Saturday. (Federal court criminal complaint)
After months of planning, federal officials say, 18-year-old Alexander Scott Mercurio was just a few days away from executing an attack on American soil in the name of the Islamic State militant group.
Mercurio detailed his plot to a man in a hotel, according to court documents: The Idaho teen said he would walk to a church from his home in Coeur d’Alene, kneecap churchgoers with a metal pipe, kill them with a knife, set off fires using small butane canisters and then try to wrestle a gun away from an officer once police arrived. He said he was committed to slaying as many people as he could before dying through suicide or an encounter with law enforcement.
What he didn’t know is that the person he was talking to was an FBI informant.
Mercurio was arrested Saturday and charged in District of Idaho federal court with providing support to a terrorist organization. No attorney was listed for him in the federal courts system. He remained in the Kootenai County jail in Coeur d’Alene as of Tuesday afternoon, according to records.
“Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, the defendant was taken into custody before he could act, and he is now charged with attempting to support ISIS’s mission of terror and violence,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release.
The Islamist militant group, also referred to as ISIS or ISIL, is a former al-Qaeda affiliate. About a decade ago, the Islamic State declared the establishment of a caliphate over swaths of Syria and Iraq. Since then, it has lost control of much of the territory.
Mercurio told an FBI informant that he started diving into Islamic State ideology while schools were closed during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Idaho-based FBI agent John H. Taylor II wrote in the criminal complaint. Mercurio said that his parents were not happy and that he had to hide his beliefs from them. He added that he previously “drank the Kool-Aid” of white supremacy but turned to the Islamic State after deciding it had more purpose for him.
“This case should be an eye-opener to the dangers of self-radicalization, which is a real threat to our communities,” Shohini Sinha, head of the FBI in Salt Lake City, said in a statement.
The FBI was investigating a network that launders money for the militant group when agents came across Mercurio. Taylor wrote that Mercurio and others who were not named in the complaint had been raising money for the Islamic State, including through cryptocurrency.
Agents came into contact with Mercurio in 2022, connecting with him through a profile they had created with the same username as an Islamic State fundraiser who had deleted their account. The teen believed he was chatting with the fundraiser and spoke with FBI sources for months.
He described having suicidal ideations, at times wavering over how far he wanted to take his new extremist beliefs. In December, he wrote that he was upset with himself for sinning, adding: “I’ve stopped asking and praying for martyrdom because I don’t feel like I want to fight and die for the sake of Allah, I just want to die and have all my problems go away.”
The situation escalated early this year, officials said, when Mercurio said he planned to carry out a suicide attack against at least one church. At one point, he spoke about making a flaming sword. He also described “some kind of insatiable bloodlust for the life of these idolaters; a craving for mayhem and murder to terrorize those around me.”
In February, he said he had the “tools” he needed, “but I still waver because I am attached to the worldly life.”
He continued: “Perhaps it is a sign of insincerity that I prefer to carry out a successful attack to perhaps gain fame and notoriety … or that I fear the blame of the blamers and hate for them to slander me in the media, and call me a mentally ill psycho who did this out of desperation and delusion and not as an act of religiously motivated terrorism.”
Days later, Mercurio met with another FBI source in Coeur d’Alene. He said his family “oppresses” him, the agent wrote. He told the informant that his parents were unhappy with his path. He was frustrated he couldn’t access his father’s guns, he said, because his father was home frequently because of a work injury.
During another meeting a couple of months later, on April 2, Mercurio said he thought about killing his father or hitting him with a pipe and handcuffing him. That way, he could get access to his father’s firearm collection, which included an AR-15, Taylor wrote.
Mercurio settled on attacking a specific church on April 7. The agent said Mercurio chose that date because it was before the end of Ramadan, which Mercurio had referred to as “the month of conquests.”
Mercurio wrote that he would send a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and delete his social media before he would “burn the temple to the ground and flee,” then “rinse and repeat for all 21+ churches in the town until killed.” He sent the 20-second statement on April 6 and was arrested the same day, authorities said.
Law enforcement raided his home about 12:45 p.m. and found the items he had promised to use — the butane canisters and pipe, handcuffs, a knife and a machete — along with several of the father’s guns, Taylor wrote. Agents also found an Islamic State flag in Mercurio’s bedroom.
Agents searched his school-issued laptop and found audio files of iihadi chants, Taylor wrote. Law enforcement also found 50 files, mostly audio files of chants and songs, celebrating the conquests of the Islamic State and the need for jihad.
“The defendant allegedly pledged loyalty to ISIS and sought to attack people attending churches in Idaho, a truly horrific plan which was detected and thwarted,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said in a statement. “This investigation demonstrates the FBI’s steadfast commitment to work with our law enforcement partners to stop those who wish to commit acts of violence on behalf of — or inspired by — foreign terrorist groups.”
Mercurio faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison if convicted, according to authorities.
Victoria Bisset contributed to this report.
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Idaho Man Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS
US Department of Justice (archive.ph)
2024-04-08 20:35:35GMT
Alexander Scott Mercurio, 18, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was arrested Saturday, April 6, 2024, in Coeur d’Alene for attempting to provide material support and resources to ISIS.
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Mercurio pledged his allegiance to ISIS and intended to commit attacks on its behalf. He planned to attack individuals at churches in Coeur d’Alene on April 7 using weapons, including knives, firearms, and fire.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) conducted the investigation and thwarted Mercurio’s violent plot. Mercurio is currently in custody awaiting his initial appearance which will be set by the Court.
“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant swore an oath of loyalty to ISIS and planned to wage an attack in its name on churches in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, the defendant was taken into custody before he could act, and he is now charged with attempting to support ISIS’s mission of terror and violence. The Justice Department will continue to relentlessly pursue, disrupt, and hold accountable those who would commit acts of terrorism against the people and interests of the United States.”
“The defendant allegedly pledged loyalty to ISIS and sought to attack people attending churches in Idaho, a truly horrific plan which was detected and thwarted by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “This investigation demonstrates the FBI’s steadfast commitment to work with our law enforcement partners to stop those who wish to commit acts of violence on behalf of – or inspired by – foreign terrorist groups.”
“Across the Department of Justice, and in my office, we have no higher calling than to protect our nation and our communities from terrorism. Along with our law enforcement partners, my office will always remain laser-focused on this part of our mission,” said U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit for the District of Idaho. “I want to thank the FBI for its tireless work on this investigation and its thorough efforts to prevent violence. The support from local law enforcement was also integral to successfully disrupting the alleged plot.”
“This case should be an eye-opener to the dangers of self-radicalization, which is a real threat to our communities,” said Special Agent in Charge Shohini Sinha of the Salt Lake City FBI. “Protecting the American people from terrorism remains the FBI’s number one priority, and we continue to encourage the public to report anything suspicious to the FBI or your local law enforcement.”
Mercurio is charged by a federal complaint with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, Mercurio faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. A federal district court judge would determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The FBI is investigating the case with valuable assistance provided by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, and Ada County Sheriff’s Office.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Heather S. Patricco and David G. Robins and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin D. Whatcott for the District of Idaho, and Charles Kovats and Andrea Broach of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section are prosecuting the case.
A complaint is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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Criminal complaint and affidavit:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1347116/dl?inline (archive.org)
The Spokesman-Review (archive.ph)
By Emma Epperly, Alexandra Duggan, and Elena Perry
2024-04-09 18:11:55GMT
Alexander Mercurio is shown in this booking photo from the Kootenai County Jail. (Courtesy)
Like thousands of students, Alexander Mercurio spent his time during COVID browsing online.
Unlike most students, the Coeur d’Alene teenager ended up in the dark corners of the internet. And for a time, he “drank the Kool-aid” of white supremacy before turning to an extremist view of Islam, and eventually the terrorist group known as the Islamic State group, according to federal criminal charges filed against him on Monday.
“I’m 17 in USA … I know I try to keep secret, I’m in north Idaho very Christian and conservative parents are mad cause I’m not shaving beard and not letting pants go below ankle,” he wrote in October 2022..
Mercurio messaged online with terrorist supporters, eventually coming up with a plan to hit his father with a metal pipe, take his guns and attack nearby churches in Coeur d’Alene, the complaint alleges.
As the holy month of Ramadan drew to a close, Mercurio selected a specific church that he planned to attack on Sunday. He wrote a statement pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State and his plan to kill himself during the attack.
The plot never had a chance. The FBI foiled his plans and arrested him hours before the planned attack after spending months tracking Mercurio through informants and surveillance. The case was serious enough that it merited the attention of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
‘It’s justified’
Dressed in a red and white jumpsuit Tuesday, Mercurio was unapologetic about his plans during an interview at the Kootenai County Jail.
Mercurio said he was a normal kid with friends until the last three years of high school when he isolated himself while doing school online.
That’s when he found Islam.
“I radicalized myself through that,” he said, squinting frequently. “The purpose is revenge. It’s an eye for an eye.”
Initially, he was interested in more mainstream Islam, but then began reading posts about how Western Christian countries voted for politicians who will interfere in predominately Muslim countries and attack civilians, he said.
“It’s retribution,” he said. “If our people will be slaughtered, it should happen to you.”
He continued praying and studying, Mercurio said, and eventually began to support terrorist groups like Al Queda. In the interview Tuesday, Mercurio praised Osama Bin Laden.
He said his planned attack had nothing to do with race but instead religion, and that he hoped to target all non-Muslims.
“It’s justified,” Mercurio said.
Mercurio said he was coming home from his job at Walmart when two FBI agents introduced themselves to him, eventually telling him they knew about his plan and arresting him.
Mercurio said the charge he faces don’t scare him.
“It’s a consequence if I got caught,” he said. “The point was to kill until I was killed.”
Mercurio’s self-radicalization is not abnormal following the COVID-19 pandemic. A United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute report found that terrorist and violent extremist groups tried to take advantage of the pandemic to expand their activities and recruit people . Terrorist groups like the Islamic State group and others used conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19 to draw people into other ideologies, like saying the virus is a “solider of Allah” punishing unbelievers, the report says.
Research published 2015 in a study sponsored by the Department of Justice’s Domestic Radicalization to Terrorism program points to four stages of self-radicalization concluding in acts of violence.
The first stage, pre-radicalization, paves the way cognitively for an individual to align with radical beliefs. This can include dissatisfaction with world affairs or authorities, a personal crisis or seeking information from new authority figures.
The second stage is detachment, a transition from one’s previous in-person life toward increasing time spent engaging with extremists online. This can include personifying online figures in one’s real life, seeking approval from new authority figures, lifestyle changes such as dropping out of school or work and attempting to convert others to their extremist views.
Immersion is the third stage, which involves attempts to commit oneself to the cause, potentially involving moving abroad, marrying someone in the extremist community or learning new skills a terrorist group may find advantageous, like firearm use.
The final stage is taking action, perhaps enlisting in a terrorist group, threatening people, taking steps to carry out violence or committing acts of violence under the group’s cause.
Online messages turn to real world plans
The FBI began tracking Mercurio’s activity in group chats full of Islamic State supporters as early as 2022. Those chats included confidential informants who reported Mercurio’s increasingly specific plans to kill himself and others, documents say.
Mercurio told people in chats that his parents were Christian and unsupportive of his Muslim faith. His parents, who divorced in 2019, pushed him to go back to in-person school, he said.
“Ok brother it was calm for a couple days, now its serious. They’re sending me to in-person school again, more therapy, more stuff like that etc etc, probably not coming back any time soon,” he wrote in October 2022.
A few days later, Mercurio said his parents’ plans had expanded to potentially sending him away to a program.
“My parents want me to stop being Muslim and praying and drop everything 100 percent tomorrow or they take away absolutely everything and send me to in-person school to make sure I don’t pray or if that doesn’t work send me to youth camp or juvenile hall or something IDK please I just don’t know what to do this will probably be my last message in a long while,” he wrote three days later.
In an interview Tuesday, Mercurio said his parents divorced in 2019 because of dysfunction on both ends. Both of his parents didn’t like his online interests and tried to redirect him, Mercurio said.
Mercurio’s school computer contained more than 50 audio files of chants and songs glorifying the Islamic State group, and the FBI matched his IP address to social media profiles affiliated with Islamic State causes, according to the complaint. He told people in the group chats that his parents were continuing to discourage his faith and that he wanted to be more involved.
In February, he sent messages about wanting to go fight on the front lines, the document said, but saying money might force him to “just do a home op.”
“I can’t say I tried to make her accept me, because she always hated my religion from day one,” Mercurio wrote, according to the complaint. “I still hold a big grudge against my parents for what they have and continue to do to me.”
In late March, he allegedly began planning an attack, as documented in messages to the informants and recorded at in-person meetings.
He wrote that there are “three or five churches within walking distance of me so targeting those ones isn’t hard. The others are farther away, I’d have to hijack a car and drive over,” he wrote.
He allegedly told the informants he was “considering” killing his father, who was always home due to a disability, but that his family was giving him less of a hard time because his grades were good and he was keeping his religion to himself.
On April 1, allegedly Mercurio announced his plans to kill people at a specific church near his house. He met up with an informant in person a few times that week, including once to buy a metal pipe he planned to hit his dad with.
Throughout the week before the attack, documents say he uploaded information from Islamic State sources to the group chat. That’s when an informant asked for photos and details of the plan. On April 6, he uploaded a recorded final message. At about noon the same day, the FBI searched the Mercurio family home.
Agents found a toolbox in Mercurio’s closet with an Islamic State flag and materials to carry out the attack, including a machete, according to the complaint. Mercurio’s father allegedly had guns locked in his bedroom closet, including an AR-15 that Mercurio planned to steal and use in the attack.
Mercurio was arrested and booked into the Kootenai County Jail on suspicion of attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He has yet to be assigned a public defender, according to court records. The FBI declined to comment further on Mercurio’s arrest.
On Tuesday, Mercurio said he hopes his parents understand his actions and that he loves them.
Withdrawn, isolated teen
Lake City tenth-grader Maddox Ramey recognized Mercurio’s face when he heard the news Tuesday morning, though they’d never talked. The threats to unspecified local churches disturbed him; his mom worships at a church right across the street from the high school.
“I’m still going to church; I’m not going to let a punk little kid bother that,” he said.
While he didn’t know Mercurio, he reasoned that he may have been a loner seeking connection, leading to his radicalization. According to the affidavit, Mercurio told an informant that he had once engaged in white supremacy, but found “more purpose” in the Islamic State group .
“He probably didn’t have a lot of friends, like, I’m not just saying that, he probably found a group online to reside with, and maybe they were ISIS members so he decided to join,” Maddox said, using a common abbreviation for the Islamic State.
Lake City Senior Landon Burt had one class with Mercurio and recalls him withdrawing from his peers until he eventually stopped coming to class, Burt said.
Before graduating last year, Mercurio spent his last two years of high school taking online school, according to Coeur d’Alene Public Schools spokesperson Stephany Bales.
“I just never got to know him too well,” Burt said. “I’m pretty sure that anyone who tried to get to know him, he was just very closed-off, very shy.”
Burt knew Mercurio to be reclusive, but not malicious.
“It never seemed like he would do something like that. He never seemed like a person of bad intentions in this world,” he said. “I hope that he didn’t do those things, but you never know a person unless you talk to them. And I never got the chance to talk to him.”
Reporter Elena Perry contributed to this report.
This story is developing.
Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
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Teen arrested day before he planned to attack churches in name of ISIS, feds say
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Ben Brasch
2024-04-09 22:57:47GMT
Alexander Scott Mercurio in front of a flag of the Islamic State militant group. He was arrested Saturday. (Federal court criminal complaint)
After months of planning, federal officials say, 18-year-old Alexander Scott Mercurio was just a few days away from executing an attack on American soil in the name of the Islamic State militant group.
Mercurio detailed his plot to a man in a hotel, according to court documents: The Idaho teen said he would walk to a church from his home in Coeur d’Alene, kneecap churchgoers with a metal pipe, kill them with a knife, set off fires using small butane canisters and then try to wrestle a gun away from an officer once police arrived. He said he was committed to slaying as many people as he could before dying through suicide or an encounter with law enforcement.
What he didn’t know is that the person he was talking to was an FBI informant.
Mercurio was arrested Saturday and charged in District of Idaho federal court with providing support to a terrorist organization. No attorney was listed for him in the federal courts system. He remained in the Kootenai County jail in Coeur d’Alene as of Tuesday afternoon, according to records.
“Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, the defendant was taken into custody before he could act, and he is now charged with attempting to support ISIS’s mission of terror and violence,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release.
The Islamist militant group, also referred to as ISIS or ISIL, is a former al-Qaeda affiliate. About a decade ago, the Islamic State declared the establishment of a caliphate over swaths of Syria and Iraq. Since then, it has lost control of much of the territory.
Mercurio told an FBI informant that he started diving into Islamic State ideology while schools were closed during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Idaho-based FBI agent John H. Taylor II wrote in the criminal complaint. Mercurio said that his parents were not happy and that he had to hide his beliefs from them. He added that he previously “drank the Kool-Aid” of white supremacy but turned to the Islamic State after deciding it had more purpose for him.
“This case should be an eye-opener to the dangers of self-radicalization, which is a real threat to our communities,” Shohini Sinha, head of the FBI in Salt Lake City, said in a statement.
The FBI was investigating a network that launders money for the militant group when agents came across Mercurio. Taylor wrote that Mercurio and others who were not named in the complaint had been raising money for the Islamic State, including through cryptocurrency.
Agents came into contact with Mercurio in 2022, connecting with him through a profile they had created with the same username as an Islamic State fundraiser who had deleted their account. The teen believed he was chatting with the fundraiser and spoke with FBI sources for months.
He described having suicidal ideations, at times wavering over how far he wanted to take his new extremist beliefs. In December, he wrote that he was upset with himself for sinning, adding: “I’ve stopped asking and praying for martyrdom because I don’t feel like I want to fight and die for the sake of Allah, I just want to die and have all my problems go away.”
The situation escalated early this year, officials said, when Mercurio said he planned to carry out a suicide attack against at least one church. At one point, he spoke about making a flaming sword. He also described “some kind of insatiable bloodlust for the life of these idolaters; a craving for mayhem and murder to terrorize those around me.”
In February, he said he had the “tools” he needed, “but I still waver because I am attached to the worldly life.”
He continued: “Perhaps it is a sign of insincerity that I prefer to carry out a successful attack to perhaps gain fame and notoriety … or that I fear the blame of the blamers and hate for them to slander me in the media, and call me a mentally ill psycho who did this out of desperation and delusion and not as an act of religiously motivated terrorism.”
Days later, Mercurio met with another FBI source in Coeur d’Alene. He said his family “oppresses” him, the agent wrote. He told the informant that his parents were unhappy with his path. He was frustrated he couldn’t access his father’s guns, he said, because his father was home frequently because of a work injury.
During another meeting a couple of months later, on April 2, Mercurio said he thought about killing his father or hitting him with a pipe and handcuffing him. That way, he could get access to his father’s firearm collection, which included an AR-15, Taylor wrote.
Mercurio settled on attacking a specific church on April 7. The agent said Mercurio chose that date because it was before the end of Ramadan, which Mercurio had referred to as “the month of conquests.”
Mercurio wrote that he would send a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and delete his social media before he would “burn the temple to the ground and flee,” then “rinse and repeat for all 21+ churches in the town until killed.” He sent the 20-second statement on April 6 and was arrested the same day, authorities said.
Law enforcement raided his home about 12:45 p.m. and found the items he had promised to use — the butane canisters and pipe, handcuffs, a knife and a machete — along with several of the father’s guns, Taylor wrote. Agents also found an Islamic State flag in Mercurio’s bedroom.
Agents searched his school-issued laptop and found audio files of iihadi chants, Taylor wrote. Law enforcement also found 50 files, mostly audio files of chants and songs, celebrating the conquests of the Islamic State and the need for jihad.
“The defendant allegedly pledged loyalty to ISIS and sought to attack people attending churches in Idaho, a truly horrific plan which was detected and thwarted,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said in a statement. “This investigation demonstrates the FBI’s steadfast commitment to work with our law enforcement partners to stop those who wish to commit acts of violence on behalf of — or inspired by — foreign terrorist groups.”
Mercurio faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison if convicted, according to authorities.
Victoria Bisset contributed to this report.
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Idaho Man Arrested for Attempting to Provide Material Support to ISIS
US Department of Justice (archive.ph)
2024-04-08 20:35:35GMT
Alexander Scott Mercurio, 18, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was arrested Saturday, April 6, 2024, in Coeur d’Alene for attempting to provide material support and resources to ISIS.
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Mercurio pledged his allegiance to ISIS and intended to commit attacks on its behalf. He planned to attack individuals at churches in Coeur d’Alene on April 7 using weapons, including knives, firearms, and fire.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) conducted the investigation and thwarted Mercurio’s violent plot. Mercurio is currently in custody awaiting his initial appearance which will be set by the Court.
“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant swore an oath of loyalty to ISIS and planned to wage an attack in its name on churches in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, the defendant was taken into custody before he could act, and he is now charged with attempting to support ISIS’s mission of terror and violence. The Justice Department will continue to relentlessly pursue, disrupt, and hold accountable those who would commit acts of terrorism against the people and interests of the United States.”
“The defendant allegedly pledged loyalty to ISIS and sought to attack people attending churches in Idaho, a truly horrific plan which was detected and thwarted by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “This investigation demonstrates the FBI’s steadfast commitment to work with our law enforcement partners to stop those who wish to commit acts of violence on behalf of – or inspired by – foreign terrorist groups.”
“Across the Department of Justice, and in my office, we have no higher calling than to protect our nation and our communities from terrorism. Along with our law enforcement partners, my office will always remain laser-focused on this part of our mission,” said U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit for the District of Idaho. “I want to thank the FBI for its tireless work on this investigation and its thorough efforts to prevent violence. The support from local law enforcement was also integral to successfully disrupting the alleged plot.”
“This case should be an eye-opener to the dangers of self-radicalization, which is a real threat to our communities,” said Special Agent in Charge Shohini Sinha of the Salt Lake City FBI. “Protecting the American people from terrorism remains the FBI’s number one priority, and we continue to encourage the public to report anything suspicious to the FBI or your local law enforcement.”
Mercurio is charged by a federal complaint with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, Mercurio faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. A federal district court judge would determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The FBI is investigating the case with valuable assistance provided by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, and Ada County Sheriff’s Office.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Heather S. Patricco and David G. Robins and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin D. Whatcott for the District of Idaho, and Charles Kovats and Andrea Broach of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section are prosecuting the case.
A complaint is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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Criminal complaint and affidavit:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1347116/dl?inline (archive.org)
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