Federal judge sentences Mercurio to 18 years for Islamic State material support

Prosecutors described a planned attack on Coeur d’Alene churches

Alexander Scott Mercurio, 21, pleaded guilty last month to a federal terrorism charge for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group. U.S. District Judge David C. Nye sentenced him Tuesday to 18 years in federal prison and said he would be placed on lifetime supervised release after completing his prison term.

Prosecutors said Mercurio pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State group and planned to attack churches in Coeur d’Alene on the group’s behalf. They said he intended to use explosives, knives, firearms and other weapons, and that the FBI arrested him on April 6, 2024, one day before the planned attack.

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. In a court document, however, they described Mercurio as a depressed teen when he was arrested and said he had been raised in a dysfunctional family that exposed him to white supremacist ideology at a young age.

The defense also said Mercurio was dealing with family trauma and was isolated from the outside world when a government informant befriended him online. His attorneys wrote that he had moved among multiple political ideologies before ultimately embracing radical Islam in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“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.”

Defense attorneys said Mercurio had since renounced his extremist views and had been assessed as a low risk of future danger. They asked Nye 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, Mercurio gave the informant an audio recording pledging his support for IS and a photograph of himself holding a knife in front of an IS flag, according to court records.

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 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.