Seven alleged members of a Ku Klux Klan group in North Carolina have been indicted on weapons conspiracy charges related to a 2002 bomb plot.

Four suspects, Daniel Leigh Barefoot, Jonathan Ashley Avery, Jonathan Maynard and Rossie Lynwood Strickland, were arrested on January 6, 2006.  Three other suspects, Sharon Renee Barefoot, Marvin Glen Gautier and Michael Anthony Brewer, were previously arrested on murder charges.

The seven suspects, named in a federal indictment unsealed on January 9, are accused of conspiring to steal 31 guns from a building in Benson, North Carolina, in October 2001 and selling some of them for at least $1,650.

Two of the suspects, Daniel Barefoot and Sharon Renee Barefoot, are related to Charles Robert Barefoot, Jr., the self-styled "Grand Dragon" of the Nation's Knights of the KKK in Benson.  He is currently in jail awaiting trial  in the alleged killing of Lawrence Arthur Pettit, a member of his group whose body was found in a Sampson County field in 2003.  Charles Barefoot also faces federal charges of possessing explosives in his home.  He has served time for allegedly plotting to blow up the Johnston County Sheriff's Office, the sheriff  and the county jail in 2002.

Johnson County Sheriff Steve Bizzell, one Charles Barefoot's alleged targets, said the seven suspects tried to make money off the guns in order to carry out the bomb plot.