Man Sentenced to 18 Years for Plotting ISIS-Inspired Attack on Churches in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

A 21-year-old man, Alexander Scott Mercurio, was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge David Nye to 18 years in prison and lifetime supervised release for plotting an ISIS-inspired “martyrdom operation” against churches in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

The FBI arrested Mercurio on April 6, 2024, one day before he planned to carry out the attack. Last month he pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. His lawyers had asked for a nine-year sentence, arguing that he had abandoned radical Islam and that he was destabilized by a dysfunctional family.

M. Scott Proctor, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said: “America’s founders wanted our Nation to be a place where the faithful of any denomination could exercise their religious beliefs freely and without fear of violence.” He added, “Alexander Scott Mercurio planned to attack that fundamental freedom by bringing death and destruction to several churches.”

Court documents include messages Mercurio sent online discussing his adherence to radical Islam. In one message dated February 10, 2024, he wrote: “I am a hypocrite who has not even spat in the face of a kafir [a non-Muslim] or donated a single penny in the cause of Allah, let alone spilled their blood and induced terror into their hearts and minds. I have the tools to do so, but I still waiver because I am attached to the worldly life.”

According to messages obtained by investigators, Mercurio developed his attack plan in the weeks that followed. He said he wanted the attack to occur during Ramadan and specifically on a Sunday, because it was Christians’ “special day.” In one message, he said he planned to “stop close by the church, equip the weapon(s) and storm the temple, kill as many as possible before they inevitably dispurse/scatter, then burn the temple to the ground and flee the scene, then move onto the next church, rinse and repeat for all 21+ churches in town until killed.” He also discussed killing congregants with a machete and setting churches on fire. In the days before the planned attack, he recorded a pledge of allegiance to ISIS.

One day before the attack was set to happen, the FBI executed a search warrant at his home and arrested him. Agents found butane canisters, lighters, handcuffs, a knife, and a machete. They also found guns belonging to his father, which Mercurio had planned to take for the attack. Protecting worshipers who gather on a Sunday morning is the kind of defense of the vulnerable that Psalm 82:3 calls for, and the arrest came before any congregation was harmed.

The FBI first became aware of Mercurio while investigating a scheme to fund ISIS through cryptocurrency. Investigators tied him to an anonymous social media account and found that he was deeply immersed in the world of radical Islam. A search of his files revealed material glorifying mass killers, audio of jihadi chants calling for “vengeance and blood and speaking of the inexorable advance of the black flag,” and numerous downloaded songs glorifying Islamic conquest.

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