LOS ANGELES : Gun Maker Gets 2 1/2 Years for Role in Skinhead Case

A machinist who pleaded guilty to helping manufacture illegal machine gun parts for sale to a white supremacist group was sentenced Monday to 2 1/2 years in a federal prison.

Christopher Berwick, 49, of Santa Clarita was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ronald S.W. Lew, who said it was clear that Berwick had a minor role in a conspiracy to help arm hate groups. Berwick pleaded guilty last year to making parts for machine guns that a San Fernando Valley couple, Christian and Doris Nadal, sold to an undercover FBI agent.

“If you don’t recognize it, Mr. Berwick, you’re getting the lowest term possible,” Lew said.

The Nadals were convicted on weapons charges last year and were sentenced Dec. 6. Nadal, 35, got eight years and his wife got more than three years. Berwick and the Nadals were among nine people arrested in July on charges of manufacturing, possessing and selling machine guns, silencers and explosives, and of other crimes.

Authorities alleged that it was part of a skinhead plot to kill prominent blacks, including Rodney G. King, and bomb the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black congregation in Los Angeles.

The defendant told the judge earlier that he regretted his actions, saying that making the weapons parts was “the biggest bad judgment of my life.”