Small news source keeps feds feet to the fire

The arrest of a terror suspect on Monday was not a large surprise to me, thanks to reporting of a small northwestern Massachusetts news site.

My longtime friend, Sally, e-mailed me a story from iberkshires.com last week that had reported on the search of a house in Adams, Mass. The town is near the state line with Vermont. The original reporting told of FBI agents along with other officers retrieving various items from a  house on July 4. The news site kept getting stonewalled by federal authorities until today when they announced charges against an ISIS, or ISIL, sympathizer.

Alexander Ciccolo, aka Ali Al Amriki, 23, was arrested on charges of a felon in possession of firearms. Ciccolo, whose father is a 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, was caught taking delivery of two Glock handguns, a Colt AR-15 and a SG-550. Both the Colt and SG, the latter manufactured by Swiss Arms, are .223-caliber rifles. Both are characterized as assault weapons although some gun-rights supporters often dispute such a description of similar weapons. Literature from a sister company, Sig Sauer, uses the assault rifle moniker for the SG-550. Found at Ciccolo’s residence as well was material that included a pressure cooker, which was of the sort used in the Boston terror bombings. The suspect was convicted of a DUI charge in February.

Ciccolo had been on the feds’ radar since last fall after what the FBI called an “anonymous” acquaintance indicated the suspect was “obsessed” with Islam. That source is reportedly Ciccolo’s father, the Boston police captain, according to the Associated Press.

A hat tip to iberkshires.com for their dogged reporting on this story. I kept waiting to hear about an arrest and, lo and behold!