CLEVELAND —An Ohio Amish sect leader was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in federal prison for his leadership role in beard- and hair-cutting attacks on members of other Amish communities in 2011.

Prosecutors had recommended a life sentence for Samuel Mullet Sr., 67, who was convicted of a hate crime in September for orchestrating attacks carried out on six Amish men and two women, though he was not present for any of them.

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Fifteen of Mullet's followers in the breakaway Amish sect from Bergholz, Ohio, who were also convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy and kidnapping under federal hate crimes laws received lesser prison sentences on Friday.

"There is no doubt that Mullet wanted, agreed with and encouraged all of these attacks," prosecutors said in a court filing.

Mullet and members of his Bergholz, Ohio, community were convicted of multiple counts under the Federal Hate Crime statute, including conspiracy and kidnapping for attacks prosecutors said were motivated by religious disputes between Mullet and other Amish leaders.

The Amish are known for their plain dress and shunning of technology. Amish women and married Amish men do not cut their hair or beards, because they are symbols of living a religious life.

Victims of the attack testified they were restrained and had their hair forcibly cut using scissors, clippers, shears and battery-operated razors. The followers then brought the beard and head hair back to show Mullet.

Defense attorneys disputed the nature and seriousness of the crimes, arguing that the attacks were a result of personal, not religious, disputes and that the offenses do not deserve the lengthy sentences proposed by the government.

The defense's arguments for leniency included numerous letters from family and business acquaintances telling of the hardships the Bergholz community has endured without the seven adult men during the winter.

One Mullet supporter wrote, "The picture the rest of the world is trying to paint of him is not the Samuel Mullet I know."

An attorney for defendant Lester Miller told the court the defendants' children will be most affected by the loss of their parents -- since sons in Amish communities serve as apprentices to their fathers.

Prosecutors also submitted 14 handwritten letters from members of the Amish community expressing fear for Bergholz community children and supporting a lengthy or life sentence for Mullet.

Nine of the male defendants are currently in prison, while one male and all six female defendants have remained free.

Jury deliberations started Thursday in the trial of an Amish leader and 15 followers who are accused of forcibly cutting the hair and beards of religious rivals.

Samuel J. Mullet Sr., a 66-year-old bishop for a group of Amish in Bergholz, Ohio, is accused of leading a group of 15 men and women in carrying out hair- and beard-cutting attacks against nine fellow Amish in Ohio last year. The Amish community's women and married men don't cut their hair and beards, because they are considered sacred symbols of righteousness, according to Reuters.

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The 16 face charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, hate crimes and obstruction in U.S. District Court in Cleveland because the crimes were based on the "actual or perceived religion" of the victims, according to an affidavit. Prosecutors argue that they were motivated by religious disputes, Reuters reported.

Though Mullet was not present during the attacks, prosecutors allege he organized the effort, it said.

Previous story: Hate crime trial under way in Amish beard-cutting trial

"He is different from everyone else. He didn't get any blood or hair on himself, but none of the terror would have happened without him," Reuters quoted U.S. Attorney Kristy Parker as saying.

Attorneys for the defendants acknowledge the crimes did happen but say it may be going too far to call them hate crimes, the AP reported.

Mullet's attorney, Ed Bryan, characterized the prosecutors' presentation as reading like a movie script.

"This isn't a grand conspiracy," he told Reuters. "They are trying to hold him accountable for crimes he didn't commit."

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In closing arguments Wednesday, a federal prosecutor told the jury that Mullet had waged a "campaign of terror," and the nine victims' beards and hair were sheared "like animals," The Plain Dealer in Cleveland reported. 

If convicted, the defendants could face up to life in prison, according to Reuters.

NBC News' Kari Huus, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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A hate-crimes trial got under way in a U.S. District Court in Cleveland, Ohio, Tuesday morning for an Amish leader and 15 followers accused of forcibly cutting the hair and beards of religious rivals.

Samuel Mullet Sr., a 66-year-old bishop for a group of Amish in Bergholz, Ohio, and a group of co-defendants including four of his sons, face charges of conspiracy, hate crimes, kidnapping and obstruction for attacks on nine victims.

Prosecutors laid out their case to the jury, arguing that the group led by Mullet spent months planning the hair- and beard-cutting attacks, considered deeply offensive in Amish culture, The Associated Press reported. 

Amish community members appeared in court in their traditional attire — including suspenders and long beards for men, and long dresses and head scarves for the women, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. 

The Amish are known for simple living and shunning the use of technology.

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The elder Mullet sat stiffly in his seat as the trial got under way, wearing a blue shirt and suspenders, with a beard hanging down to the middle of his chest, according to the AP. The defendants have denied the charges and rejected plea bargain offers. They could face lengthy prison terms if convicted, it said.

"Every one of these attacks targeted those symbols of Amish righteousness," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Brennan, according to the AP. 

She said that although the elder Mullet did not take part in the attacks, he was the mastermind. 

"Sam Mullet was at the beginning and the end of all these attacks," she said, according to AP.

Defense attorneys portrayed the attacks as family disputes or disagreements over religion that fall short of hate crimes.

Dean Carro, the attorney for Lester Miller, said  his client was moved by concern for his parents' salvation when he, two of his brothers and others went to their parents' house and cut off their father's beard, according to the Plain Dealer. The sons' wives then cut off two feet of their mother-in-law's hair, the report said. 

"He thought his parents had forgotten the rules," Carro said of Miller, acccording to Reuters. "He was trying to bring them back to the fold." 

Carro also told jurors that his client once voluntarily cut off his own beard and slept in a chicken coop in order to correct his own errant ways. 

Judge Aaron Polster started the day's proceedings by giving instructions to the jury, which was selected on Monday — explaining the definition of conspiracy and other charges and the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence, according to a report by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He also asked jurors to put aside perceptions of the legal system gleaned from television shows such as "Matlock" and "Law and Order."

According to an FBI affidavit, the attacks were acts of revenge in a dispute between the elder Mullet and other Amish bishops who disagreed with his decision to excommunicate eight families after they left his group in 2005. 

Read the affidavit

A gathering of 300 mainstream Amish overturned Mullet’s decision, apparently prompting Mullet and his followers to launch the attacks, the affidavit said.

In the forcible cutting of the victims’ hair and beards with 8-inch horse mane-cutting shears, some of the victims were wounded and bloodied, it said.

The case has drawn national attention because the unusual and violent attacks are at odds with Amish pacifism, and because the Amish community is generally self-contained, handling disputes internally. 

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Prosecutors will begin arguing their case Tuesday in the federal hate-crime trial of an Amish leader and 15 followers accused of forcibly cutting the beards or hair of their religious enemies last fall. 

A jury was selected on Monday for the case being heard in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, The Associated Press reported. 

Samuel J. Mullet Sr. and his co-defendants, all but one of them relatives, face charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, hate crimes and obstruction, "because of actual or perceived religion" of the victims, according to an affadavit.

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Sixteen men and women are accused in three separate attacks on nine people. Mullet, 66, is accused of being the ringleader of the assaults although authorities say he was not present during any of them, according to Reuters.

Prosecutors will seek to show that Mullet had cult leader-like control over the members of the  Amish clan who allegedly engaged in the attacks. 

Some of the alleged victims are parents of some of the suspects, highlighting a bitter dispute within the Amish community, which is normally known for its pacifism.

Federal prosecutors say the attacks were revenge in a dispute between Mullet — leader  of a group of Amish in Bergholz, Ohio, that had separated from the larger Amish community 17 years ago — and other Amish bishops, according to an FBI affadavit.

Read the affidavit

A gathering of 300 mainstream Amish overturned Mullet’s decision to excommunicate eight families after they left his clan in 2005, prompting Mullet and his followers to launch the attacks, the affidavit said.

In the forcible cutting of the victims’ hair and beards with 8-inch horse mane-cutting shears, some of the victims were wounded and bloodied, the affidavit said. 

In Amish culture, men’s beard hair and women’s head hair have religious significance.

If convicted, Mullet could get life in prison, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. 

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The trial of an Amish-Mennonite minister accused of helping an American woman spirit the child she had with her former same-sex partner out of the country just before she lost custody is getting under way this week.

Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., is charged with aiding and abetting Lisa Miller in taking her child, Isabella, to Nicaragua with the intent to obstruct the parental rights of her former civil union partner, Janet Jenkins, according to the court indictment. He is not related to Lisa Miller and could face a three-year sentence if convicted.

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Federal agents haven’t been able to locate Isabella or Lisa Miller, who was indicted on international kidnapping charges in 2010. Miller gave birth to Isabella, who is now 10, through in vitro fertilization when the couple was still together in 2002. She later denounced homosexuality and took up conservative Christian ideals, Reuters reported.

 

"I think she's in the equivalent of the underground railroad with the religious people ... who see the gay rights agenda overwhelming their religious rights," Gary Buseck, legal director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which helped Jenkins in her legal effort for visitation rights, told Reuters.

The case has drawn attention in part because it involves an international custody dispute, but also because it touches upon two major issues in the public square: gay rights and religion. A jury was selected Tuesday in Burlington, Vt., and opening arguments are scheduled for Wednesday.

Kenneth Miller's lawyer, Joshua Autry, told Reuters that his client didn't plan to obstruct Jenkins' visitation rights. 

"Unfortunately for Kenneth Miller the government has decided to drag him hundreds of miles from his home to a distant venue to prosecute him in violation of his constitutional rights," he said. "We believe that after all of the evidence comes forth the jury will acquit him." 

Kenneth Miller allegedly helped arrange the pair’s exit from their home in Lynchburg, Va., to Canada, where they crossed the border from New York on Sept. 22, 2009. He then facilitated the purchase of plane tickets to Nicaragua and set up contacts for them in the Central American country, according to an affidavit filed by Deputy U.S. Marshal Max Galusha.

Lisa Miller wed her former partner, Janet Jenkins, in a civil union in Vermont, but their relationship broke down in 2003. In the fall of that year, Miller moved to Virginia with Isabella. In November, she filed to dissolve their civil union, Galusha said. Reports said their union was dissolved in 2004.

The next years were filled with back-and-forth court hearings over child visitation. The court granted rights to parent-child contact to Jenkins in June 2004, but by the fall of 2009, Miller had not allowed court-ordered visits for Jenkins for much of the year.

The court determined in November 2009 that Jenkins would have sole physical and legal custody of Isabella starting on Jan. 2010, ruling that Miller had willfully interfered with her visitation rights. But Miller had already fled her home in Lynchburg, Va., with her daughter in tow.

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Kenneth Miller is the leader of a Beachy Amish Mennonite church in Stuarts Draft, The New York Times reported. The sect believes that same-sex marriage is a sin and its members said the mother and daughter were sheltered by their missionaries in Nicaragua, the newspaper reported. 

There are about 13,000 members of the Beachy Amish Mennonite sect worldwide, Cory Anderson, a member and doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University, told The Times.

Lisa Miller had filed her lawsuit seeking an order of parentage (to declare that she was the only one with parental rights to Isabella) in Virginia on the day that state's statute banning same-sex marriage went into effect in 2004, said Greg Nevins, a Lambda Legal attorney who worked on the case from that year to 2010. He noted it was important to establish such attempts at an "end-run" -- by changing jurisdictions in order to get a desired outcome -- would not be acceptable.

The case was thus important, not because it broke new ground or put same-sex parents in a different category, but "because it basically acknowledges that they should be treated ... the same as other people parenting children,” Nevins said.

Sarah Star, Jenkins' lawyer in Vermont, said she hoped the trial of Kenneth Miller would send a message to those continuing to "aid and abet" the abduction and ongoing crime, though she didn't think her client was going to get closure from the proceedings. 

“People need to be held accountable for breaking the law, but she’s interested in what’s going to bring Isabella home," she told NBC News. "The bottom line is … that Isabella is still missing."

Reuters and The New York Times contributed to this report.

Comments? Questions? You can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com

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The alleged leader of a splinter Amish group charged with federal religious-motivated crimes in a slew of beard- and hair-cutting attacks in his Ohio community would use electricity to facilitate an electronic monitoring device if a judge agreed to his pre-trial release, court documents show.

Sam Mullet Sr., 66, bishop of the Amish community in Bergholz, Ohio, was indicted -- along with 11 others -- by a federal grand jury in late December for their alleged role in five separate assaults that occurred between September and November, according to the Department of Justice.

Mullet was being held pending the start of the March 19 trial, according to The Plain Dealer. His lawyer, Edward G. Bryan, argued in a filing on Wednesday to U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio that Mullet should be freed because he would agree to use an electronic monitoring device and he did not pose a threat to his community.

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The court has "stated that there were no 'conditions or combinations of conditions' that could warrant Mr. Mullet’s release pending trial. This court seemed to make this finding, at least in part, on the fact that one of the common conditions of pretrial release imposed by courts, electronic monitoring, would not be available to Mr. Mullet because his home is not equipt (sic) with electricity because of his Amish beliefs," Bryan wrote. " ... Mr. Mullet informs that he is not opposed to allowing electricity to be installed at his residence to accommodate an electronic monitoring device.  It is not part of the Amish belief system that electricity is per se evil."

The Amish are known for simple living and most shun the conveniences of modern technology, such as electricity.

Bryan noted that Mullet is married, has 16 children -- most of whom live in the community -- and scores of grandchildren, and did not post a threat to his neighbors and was not a flight risk.

"Pretrial detention creates a much greater harm to Mr. Mullet and his family than electrical service being provided to his home. Mr. Mullet’s release on bond will allow him to be with his family and provide assistance to others in running the affairs of the home," Bryan wrote. "This is especially true for Mr. Mullet because in light of his belief system, he and his family live without many modern conveniences, such as a centralized heating system to keep his home warm in the winter. Instead, Mr. Mullet’s home is kept warm in the winter by a series of wood burning stoves that require constant replenishing of fire wood."

The Justice Department stood by Mullet's detention.

“We are opposed to the motion," Mike Tobin, a department spokesman, told msnbc.com. “Essentially we’re opposed to it for the same reason we’ve been opposed to the release of Mullet and the six co-defendants from day one, which is that they pose a threat to the community, so it’s really as simple as that.”

According to the seven-count federal indictment, religious disputes with other members of the Ohio Amish community led the defendants to plan and carry out a series of attacks on their perceived enemies. "The assaults all entailed using scissors and battery-powered clippers to forcibly cut or shave the beard hair of the male victims and the head hair of the female victims," according to the Justice Department statement.

The charges against Mullet and 11 others include conspiracy to violate the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which prohibits anyone person from willfully causing bodily injury to any person, or attempting to do so by use of a dangerous weapon, because of the actual or perceived religion of that person -- and carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Mullet has said he hadn't ordered the hair-cutting -- which is viewed as very offensive in Amish culture -- but didn't stop others, according to The Associated Press. Six of Mullet's co-defendants have also been ordered jailed pending trial.

The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger contributed to this story.