Teen arrested day before he planned to attack churches in name of ISIS, feds say
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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