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 last month to a federal terrorism charge. US District Judge David C. Nye imposed the sentence on Tuesday and ordered Mercurio to serve lifetime supervised release after his prison term.
Prosecutors said Mercurio had pledged allegiance to IS and intended to attack churches in Coeur d’Alene on the group’s behalf. He planned to use explosives, knives, firearms and other weapons, they said.
The FBI arrested him on April 6, 2024 — one day before the planned attack, according to prosecutors.
Idaho US 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. of the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho, declined to comment.
In a court filing, however, they portrayed Mercurio as a depressed teenager at the time of his arrest who had grown up in a dysfunctional family and was exposed to white supremacist ideology from a young age.
His attorneys said Mercurio was coping with family trauma and living in isolation when he was befriended online by a government informant.
By then, he had moved through several political ideologies before ultimately embracing radical Islam during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, they said.
“Starting when he was just 17 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 rejected his extremist beliefs and was assessed as posing a low risk of future danger, his attorneys said.
They urged the judge to sentence him to nine years in prison.
Court records show that Mercurio created an online repository featuring pro-IS material. He initially hoped to travel abroad to support the organization but did not have the money or resources needed to make the trip.
Shortly before his arrest, he gave the informant an audio recording pledging support for IS and a photograph of himself holding a knife in front of an IS flag.
The Islamic State group, designated a terrorist organization by the US government, seized control of large areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and declared the territory a caliphate.
Although the group had been largely defeated in both countries by 2018, it continues to maintain sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks there. IS affiliates also remain active in West Africa.
