Suspects face arraignment in Amish beard cutting case

Editor’s Note:

Four members of a breakaway Amish group charged with hate crimes will be arraigned in federal court in Youngstown, Ohio, on Wednesday.

Sect leader Samuel Mullet Sr., along with two of his sons and his son-in-law, will be in court on Wednesday. Another son and two others will appear Friday.

The seven are accused of shaving the beards and cutting the hair of individuals who refused to support Mullet.

The men who were allegedly attacked are believed to be former members of Mullet’s group who left over various disagreements. Mullet wanted to “seek revenge and punish the departing families,” federal documents in the case said.

“In doing so, the defendants forcibly restrained multiple Amish men and cut off their beards and head hair with scissors and battery-powered clippers, causing bodily injury to these men while also injuring others who attempted to stop the attacks,” the Justice Department said. “In the Amish religion, a man’s beard and head hair are sacred.”

The seven men were arrested as part of a raid on Mullet’s 800-acre compound that went down “without incident” last week, officials said.

Mullet’s sect is made up primarily of his relatives living on and around the compound in a remote valley outside Bergholz, Ohio, officials say.

Five of the men were arrested last month on charges of kidnapping and burglary stemming from an incident at the home of Myron and Arlene Miller in early October in which a group of men pulled Myron Miller out of the home by his beard, held him down, and cut off large portions of the beard.

The incident at the Millers’ home was one of a handful of incidents in several counties in which as many as 30 men and women carried out similar attacks, Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said.

CNN’s Alan Duke, Chris Welch, Chuck Hadad, Gary Tuchman and Bill Mears contributed to this report.