“They’re freeing people from oppression.’’

“Wherever they go they’re changing things.’’

“What I’m saying is they will only kill people that will fight them.’’

Alexander Ciccolo said these things and more about the terror group ISIS in a recorded interview shown by prosecutors publicly in federal court Tuesday, a rare occurrence for federal criminal court proceedings. Prosecutors said he spoke willingly with investigators in what resembled a standard office cubicle.

Ciccolo was arrested on July 4 after taking possession of firearms from a witness working with the FBI. The FBI had been tracking Ciccolo since the fall of 2014, when he expressed a desire to fight for ISIS. According to a complaint unsealed on Monday, Ciccolo threatened to use pressure cooker bombs and guns on an unidentified university.


Ciccolo looked away from the video while it was played during his detention hearing at the U.S. District Court in Springfield.

Prosecutors played the video in an effort to convince a federal judge to keep Ciccolo locked up until his pending trial. The entire interview lasted “over an hour and a half,’’ according to Assistant U.S. District Attorney Kevin O’Regan, so a “representative portion’’ was shown to the court by the prosecution.

“This is a person who is willing to kill innocent Americans,’’ O’Regan said.

Ciccolo planned to use styrofoam to make the bomb materials stick to his victims, O’Regan said.

“He was going to shoot innocent people,’’ he said.

During a routine medical exam while in custody, Ciccolo slammed a pen down on the top a nurse’s head “so hard the pen actually broke in half,’’ said O’Regan.

“Mr Ciccolo feels bad about that,’’ said David Hoose, Ciccolo’s attorney, of the attack on the nurse.

Hoose asked for “strict house arrest’’ for his client, which would have involved Ciccolo staying with his mother and stepfather in a remote part of Berkshire County. Ciccolo is “extraordinarily close’’ to his mother, he said.


“He would do nothing that would put his mother in harm’s way,’’ Hoose said.

Ciccolo’s stepfather and mother were seated in the front row of the courtroom . After Ciccolo walked into the courtroom, wearing a beard and dressed in beige prison clothes, he mouthed “I love you’’ to his family.

The hearing ended with Judge Katherine Robertson ordering Ciccolo be held pending trial.

Ciccolo’s father, Boston Police captain Robert Ciccolo, was not present in court. But U.S. District Attorney Carmen Ortiz and Vincent Lisi, the FBI special agent in charge for Boston, were present.