Boston Cop’s Son, an Accused Terrorist: ISIS Is a Good Thing
Alexander Ciccolo defends ISIS beheadings, calls victims "lowest of the low."
— -- Shortly after being arrested on terror-related charges, the estranged son of a Boston police captain told federal agents that ISIS was a good thing and that the mass murderers are really “freeing people from oppression.”
“The group that calls themselves ISIS or ISIL, they’re doing a good thing?” a federal agent asks 23-year-old Alexander Ciccolo after his July 4 arrest, as seen in a video shown in court Tuesday and published online by the government.
“Yeah. Yeah they are,” Ciccolo responds. “They’re doing a good thing.”
“What part of what they’re doing is good?” the agent asks.
“They’re implementing the Sharia [Islamic law]. They’re freeing people from oppression,” Ciccolo says.
Ciccolo, the son of veteran Boston police captain Robert Ciccolo, was nabbed on Independence Day after prosecutors say he illegally purchased four firearms -- including two high-powered rifles -- from an undercover FBI informant. The elder Ciccolo had alerted counter-terrorism authorities about a year ago that his son, with whom he had had minimal contact for several years, “was going off the deep end” and “spouting extremist jihadist sympathies,” law enforcement officials told ABC News.
Federal authorities say Alexander Ciccolo planned to attack a college campus and live-stream the execution of students online. When authorities searched his Adams, Massachusetts apartment, officials reported they found it loaded with possible bomb-maker equipment including a pressure cooker, a variety of chemicals, an alarm clock, along with “attack planning papers” and “jihad” paperwork.
In the video-tape played in court, Ciccolo said that ISIS – the group responsible for the brutal execution of several Westerners, hundreds of local civilians and unarmed prisoners of war, and the rape and slavery of minority women – was actually killing “oppressors.”
When it comes to the gruesome videos of the beheadings of the Western journalists and aid workers by an extremist dubbed “Jihadi John,” Ciccolo dismisses the victims as “criminals… the lowest of the low.”
The tape was played at a detention hearing, after which the judge said Ciccolo appeared to represent a danger to the public. He was ordered held without bail until trial on the gun charges.
Ciccolo’s attorney, David Hoose, told reporters yesterday he couldn’t comment on the allegations against his client, but when it comes to his apparent ISIS sympathies, Hoose said that while Ciccolo’s beliefs may not be “mainstream,” they didn’t actually say anything that advocated violence.