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Prison for South Jersey white supremacist

Kyle Powell needed to prove himself on New Year's Eve 2011, when he grabbed a pair of weighted gloves and drove to an apartment complex with plans to beat up someone who wasn't white.

Kyle Powell needed to prove himself on New Year's Eve 2011, when he grabbed a pair of weighted gloves and drove to an apartment complex with plans to beat up someone who wasn't white.

Three days later, after two Egyptian men were assaulted, Powell, 24, of West Collingswood, received an "Aryan Terrorist Brigade" tattoo on his left arm to symbolize his induction into the white supremacist group.

On Wednesday, in a federal courtroom in Trenton, Powell was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his part in the attack, a hate-crime conspiracy that involved two others.

Powell's New Year's Eve began at a social gathering for brigade members and affiliates in East Brunswick, N.J., according to federal documents in the case.

Powell, who was a prospective member of the group, sat around drinking and listening to white supremacist music while discussing plans to assault a non-Caucasian.

Powell's aim was to earn his patch, the symbol for full-fledged membership in the brigade, described by the Southern Poverty Law Project as an active "racist skinhead" group.

The brigade's website says it exists "to secure the existence of our people and a future for white children because the beauty of the white Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth."

If Powell were successful, he'd become a member of a group with a detailed discipline code that especially stressed respecting other members' "significant others."

Fighting would not be tolerated among members. "Any punches to be thrown will be done by the Sgt At Arms," the website said.

Eventually that evening, Powell and two others, Michal Gunar and Christopher Ising, left Ising's place in East Brunswick and went out hunting for trouble. They encountered three Egyptian men in an apartment complex in Sayreville, N.J., and attacked two of them, according to federal documents.

The documents do not say whether Powell used the weighted leather gloves. When Powell admitted his role in the conspiracy on Jan. 23, he did not plead guilty to hitting anyone.

In the federal hate crime case, the other two men, Gunar, 29, of East Windsor, N.J., and Ising, 31, of Waretown, N.J., both admitted to U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano that they had actually assaulted the men. Gunar later bragged about the assault on Facebook.

Pisano sentenced Gunar to 33 months in prison Wednesday and is to sentence Ising Friday, federal prosecutors said.

The law project says New Jersey has 51 hate groups, putting it fourth among the states behind California, Florida, and Georgia.

The Aryan Terror Brigade has organizations in East Windsor, Wildwood, Woodbridge, and Flemington, the law project said.

According to federal prosecutors, Ising also belonged to a related group, the AC Skins. The law project said the AC Skins has 12 chapters in Atlantic City and nearby communities.