Anonymous stands in solidarity with their fellow neckbeards. It is a veritable travesty of the highest order to forcibly remove one's second manhood under such humiliating circumstances. Indeed, it ranks equally with raep and censorship. This devil and his cutting shears would have been better served spending a fortnight suspended by his own beard from a rope, feeling the burning heat surge with only his own pleas for others to cut his beard ending his lofty suspension from the pillars of his own barn!

Aw come on, the guy is just a revivalist who want to bring back that great hair style of the 60's and 70's the mullet. This once again demonstrates that in the US religion has turned many people into idiots.

Gotta love these stereotypes.  Unless you're Amish, you won't know about the devout.  The Amish that find their way into the public eye have generally 'left the fold' well before.  These people that we know about are not following the orthodox pathway.  I once bought a semi-trailer off of an Amishman in North Carolina.  He met me on a modern farm tractor, took the check, jumped on the tractor, and drove across the street to a bank to cash it.  
As to the severity of the punishment, I am in agreement that it is too harsh.  He's 63 years old.  By 70, he'll not be much of a threat.  But it should be rememebered that he was a 'mastermind' of a group.  Seems to me that conspiracy charges might apply.
Also, these events did not take place out in the street (or the cornfield).  In order to accomplish these acts, these people forced their way into homes and forcefully immobilized the victims in front of their spouses and children.  It's not unusual to see guys being charged with kidnapping because they tried to stop their girlfriends from leaving.  A guy I know had to defend himself against kidnapping charges for yanking the phone cord out of the wall.  No reason that I see that might have precluded the prosecuter from bringing similar charges.
As to the prosecuter's real motive, I hope that will become clearer in the future.  This doesn't seem like it would be much of a career boost politically, since the Amish don't vote.