BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho teen is charged with making an attempt to offering subject material make stronger to the terrorist crew ISIS after prosecutors mentioned he deliberate to hold out an assault on a Coeur d’Alene church.
Alexander Scott Mercurio, 18, was once arrested Saturday, and the fees had been unsealed in in Idaho’s U.S. District Courtroom on Monday. Courtroom paperwork don’t divulge if he has employed an lawyer, and a telephone quantity for his circle of relatives may no longer be in an instant situated. Mercurio didn’t in an instant reply to an electronic mail despatched to him thru a prison inmate electronic mail device.
In a sworn commentary filed within the courtroom case, FBI job power officer John Taylor II mentioned Mercurio talked with confidential informants over a two-year span, sooner or later detailing a plan to assault churchgoers close to his northern Idaho house on April 7 the use of a lot of guns together with a steel pipe, a knife and hearth. Taylor mentioned that Mercurio deliberate to proceed the assaults at different church buildings till he was once killed, and he attempted to construct an explosive vest to put on throughout the assaults.
The assaults by no means came about. Regulation enforcement arrested Mercurio on April 6.
Mercurio advised a confidential informant that he first hooked up with ISIS throughout the beginning of the COVID pandemic, when colleges had been closed, Taylor mentioned, and investigators later discovered a number of information on his school-issued pc detailing ISIS ideology. Mercurio’s oldsters disapproved of his ideals, he allegedly advised a confidential informant posing as an ISIS supporter, and Mercurio sooner or later started to fret that he was once a hypocrite for no longer but wearing out an assault, Taylor wrote.
“I’ve stopped asking and praying for martyrdom as a result of I don’t really feel like I need to struggle and die for the sake of Allah, I simply need to die and feature all my issues pass away,” he reportedly wrote in a message to the informant, consistent with the criticism.
On March 21, Mercurio despatched an instantaneous message to the informant once more, announcing he was once stressed, pissed off and puzzled how lengthy he may stay dwelling “in one of these humiliated and shameful state,” Taylor mentioned.
“I’ve motivation for not anything however combating … like a while of insatiable bloodlust for the lifestyles juice of those idolators; a yearning for mayhem and homicide to terrorize the ones round me. I would like some higher guns than knives,” the direct message mentioned, consistent with Taylor.
Regulation enforcement moved to arrest Mercurio after he despatched an audio report pledging his allegiance to ISIS, Taylor mentioned.
“Due to the investigative efforts of the FBI, the defendant was once taken into custody sooner than he may act, and he’s now charged with making an attempt to make stronger ISIS’s undertaking of terror and violence,” Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland wrote in a press free up. “The Justice Division will proceed to relentlessly pursue, disrupt, and dangle responsible those that would dedicate acts of terrorism in opposition to the folks and pursuits of america.”
If convicted, Mercurio may well be sentenced to as much as twenty years in jail. Mercurio has no longer but had a chance to go into a plea, and he’s being held in a northern Idaho prison whilst he awaits his first courtroom look.