An Idaho man gets 18 years in prison for an Islamic State support plot

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho man has been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group.

Alexander Scott Mercurio, 21, pleaded guilty to the federal terrorism charge last month. U.S. District Judge David C. Nye sentenced him Tuesday and said Mercurio would be placed on lifetime supervised release after completing his prison term.

Prosecutors said Mercurio had pledged his allegiance to IS and planned to attack churches in Coeur d’Alene on the group’s behalf, using explosives, knives, firearms and other weapons. He was arrested by the FBI on April 6, 2024, one day before the planned attack, according to prosecutors.

Idaho U.S. Attorney John Shirts said the sentence “sends the clear message that where individuals intend to pursue acts of terrorism against the United States — whether in Coeur d’Alene, or any other community — they will be brought to justice.”

Mercurio’s defense attorneys, Carter Powers Beggs and J. Stephen Roberts Jr. with the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho, declined to comment on the case. But in a court document, they described Mercurio as a depressed teen when he was arrested who was raised in a dysfunctional family that exposed him to white supremacist ideology at a young age.

Mercurio was dealing with family trauma and isolated from the outside world when he was befriended online by a government informant, his attorneys wrote. He had already bounced between multiple political ideologies by that time, ultimately embracing radical Islam when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, they said.

“Starting when he was just seventeen years old, Mr. Mercurio spent his days holed away in his basement bedroom, talking with his best friend about increasingly radical terrorist ideologies,” his attorneys wrote. “Together they brainstormed a plan that was as horrific as it was unlikely to succeed: a suicidal attack on local churches using his father’s firearms and an untested improvised explosive/flamethrower.”

Mercurio has since renounced his extremist views, and has been assessed as a low risk of future danger, his attorneys said. They asked the judge to impose a sentence of nine years in prison.

According to court records, Mercurio created an online repository for pro-IS content and originally wanted to travel overseas to support the organization but lacked the money and resources to make the trip. Shortly before his arrest, he gave the informant an audio recording pledging his support for IS, along with a photo of himself holding a knife in front of an IS flag.

The Islamic State group, which the U.S. government designates a terror group, took control of a large swath of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and declared the territory to be a caliphate. The group had been largely defeated in both countries by 2018, but still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in both countries, and IS affiliates also operate in West Africa.