An East Windsor man who belongs to a white supremacist group was sentenced in federal court yesterday to nearly three years in prison for his role in an assault on two Middle Eastern men in Sayreville last year, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said yesterday.

Michal Gunar, 29, a member of the Aryan Terror Brigade, had attended a New Year’s Eve “meet and greet” with other white supremacists at the East Brunswick home of Christopher Ising, 31, Fishman’s office said in a press release.

Ising, Gunar and Kyle Powell, 24, West Collingswood, were drinking and listening to white supremacist music while discussing a random attack on non-whites, indictments for the three men said.

The three men then traveled to Sayreville with the intention of committing an assault, Fishman’s office said. They came upon two Middle Eastern men and began attacking them and shouting anti-Arab slurs, the office said.

Gunar pulled one of the men out of a parked car and punched him in the head, Gunar said when he pleaded guilty in April. Gunar brandished a knife as he attacked one man, and Ising used brass knuckles as he assaulted another man, repeatedly punching him in the head, authorities said.

Powell allegedly brought leather gloves with steal pellets sewn into them — “sap gloves” — to the scene of the assault, but his indictment does not explain his role in the attack, and he did not plead guilty to the attack itself.

In an online conversation shortly after the attack, Gunar boasted “we went to hunt down some (racial slur) … we whooped them,” his indictment said.

Gunar was found guilty of conspiracy to commit a hate crime assault and commission of a hate crime assault. He was sentenced to 33 months by U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano.

Powell, another Aryan Terror Brigade member, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a hate crime assault. He was sentenced yesterday to 15 months in prison.

Ising, a member of the Atlantic City Skins, pleaded guilty to the same charges as Gunar and is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. Previously, Ising spent 10 years in prison after, as a 17-year-old, he pummeled a 14-year-old girl in the head with his fists and a crowbar.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists both the Aryan Terror Brigade and the Atlantic City Skins as active racist skinhead groups with multiple chapters in New Jersey.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Atlantic City Skins is the largest of the New Jersey-based racist skinhead groups in numbers and reach, while the Aryan Terror Brigade has national reach.

Contact Brendan McGrath at (609) 989-5731 or at bmcgrath@njtimes.com.

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