Spanish police say the man suspected of plotting an ISIS-inspired attack in Colombia appeared on their radar for hate-filled messages online toward the United States, a country where he had lived and was allegedly trying to get to.
A Colombian judge jailed Raul Gutierrez last week on terrorism and conspiracy charges after the 45-year-old Cuban man had allegedly discussed his plans to attack a cafeteria in central Bogota popular with U.S. diplomats using homemade explosives.
Police escort Cuban suspect Raul Gutierrez to court where a judge will rule on prosecutors’ request he be held on terrorism and conspiracy charges in Bogota, Colombia, Thursday, March 15, 2018. Gutierrez is suspected of plotting to kill American diplomats in the name of the Islamic State. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
On Telegram, an app for mobile and desktop computers that encrypts online exchanges, Gutierrez said that he would commit a suicide attack in the name of God and the Islamic state, police said.
The attack was initially planned for March 6 but was later rescheduled for March 13, according to two Spanish agents who identified the alleged plot.
In order to carry out the plan, Gutierrez had sought work as a dishwasher in a coffee shop located in Bogota's "pink district," they said.
Gutierrez was arrested on March 12 by the Colombian police. The FBI was also part of the joint operation that, according to Spain's police, "successfully neutralized a real and imminent threat against civilians."
The investigators, who requested anonymity for security reasons, monitor online extremist activities in the general information office of the Spanish National Police.
They told The Associated Press that Gutierrez's animosity for the U.S. caught their attention during an intercepted conversation with other suspects.
"We tried to see where the seeds of that hate where rooted and to discover if those disparaging remarks disguised any other ideology," one of the investigators told the AP. "That's when we came across his radicalization in an extreme form of Islam."
In over one month of communications, Gutierrez revealed himself as "highly radicalized," one of the agents said, adding that he allegedly adopted clothing and styles similar to militants in radical groups. Police said that he also added the word "jihadist" to his social media handle.
Because the case is open and more arrests could be in the pipeline, the investigators said they couldn't confirm additional reports. But they suspected that Gutierrez's connections could extend all the way to territories in the Middle East controlled by the so-called Islamic State.
At a hearing last week in the western Colombian city of Pereira, the suspect said he had lived in the U.S. but is now fighting against American dominance in the "new world order" because "they are thieves and conquerors and killers."
Gutierrez, who had been expelled from Colombia twice before and was allegedly attempting to return to the U.S., also told reporters that despite his arrest the "seed has been planted."
"He meant that he might not be free to carry out an attack but others are," one of the Spanish investigators said. "That's why we need to be vigilant."
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A teenager planned to attack churches in a northern Idaho city using a metal pipe, butane fuel, a machete and, if he could get them, his father's guns, according to federal prosecutors who charged him with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group.
Authorities said Alexander Scott Mercurio, 18, adopted the Muslim faith against his Christian parents' wishes and was in contact with FBI informants posing as Islamic State group supporters.
Mercurio was arrested Saturday, the day before investigators believe he planned to carry out the attack. Phone messages left for a relative and for his defense attorneys at the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington & Idaho were not immediately returned Tuesday. Mercurio did not immediately respond to an email through a jail inmate email system.
Mercurio told one informant he intended to incapacitate his father with the pipe, handcuff him and steal his guns and a car to carry out the attack in Coeur d'Alene, according to an FBI agent's sworn statement in the case unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court.
The guns included rifles, handguns and ammunition his father kept in a locked closet, but Mercurio still planned to attack with the pipe, fire and knives if he couldn't get the firearms, alleged the sworn statement by FBI task force officer John Taylor II.
If he could get the key and access the closet, Mercurio said in an audio recording he gave the informant, “everything will be so much easier and better and I will achieve better things,” according to the statement.
The recording was to accompany a photo the informant took of Mercurio in front of the IS flag holding up a knife and his index finger in a gesture commonly used by the group, the statement alleged.
After attacking the church, Mercurio told the informant he planned to attack others in town — as many as 21 — before being killed in an act of martyrdom, according to the statement.
Mercurio talked with confidential informants over a two-year span and at one point tried to build an explosive vest to wear during the attacks, the statement alleged.
Mercurio told a confidential informant that he first connected with IS during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools were closed, Taylor said, and investigators later found several files on his school-issued laptop detailing IS's extremist ideology. Mercurio's parents disapproved of his beliefs, he allegedly told a confidential informant posing as an IS supporter, and Mercurio eventually began to worry that he was a hypocrite for not yet carrying out an attack, according to the statement.
“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,” he wrote in a message to the informant, according to the statement.
On March 21, Mercurio sent a direct message to the informant again, saying he was restless, frustrated and wondered how long he could keep living “in such a humiliated and shameful state,” the statement alleged.
“I have motivation for nothing but fighting ... like some time of insatiable bloodlust for the life juice of these idolators; a craving for mayhem and murder to terrorize those around me. I need some better weapons than knives," the direct message said, according to the statement.
Law enforcement moved to arrest Mercurio after he sent an audio file pledging his allegiance to the IS, the statement alleged.
“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 wrote in a press release. "The Justice Department will continue to relentlessly pursue, disrupt, and hold accountable those who would commit acts of terrorism against the people and interests of the United States.”
If convicted, Mercurio could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. Mercurio has not yet had an opportunity to enter a plea. He is being held in a northern Idaho jail while he awaits his first court appearance, scheduled for late Wednesday morning.
The Islamic State group took control of a large swath of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and had been largely defeated on the battlefield by 2018. However, it maintains desert hideouts in both countries and its regional affiliates operate in Afghanistan, West Africa and the Far East. IS claimed responsibility for last month’s Moscow concert hall attack that killed 145 people, the most deadly attack in Russia in years.
Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Associated Press researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed .
FILE - An FBI seal is seen on a wall on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. An Idaho teenager is charged with attempting to provide material support to the terrorist group ISIS after prosecutors said he planned to carry out an attack on a Coeur d'Alene church. Alexander Scott Mercurio was arrested on Saturday, April 6, 2024, and the charges were unsealed in Idaho's U.S. District Court on Monday. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
The criminal complaint against Alexander Scott Mercurio is photographed on Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Mercurio, 18, is charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group after prosecutors said he planned to carry out an attack on a Coeur d'Alene church. Mercurio was arrested Saturday, and the charges were unsealed in Idaho's U.S. District Court on Monday. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
