Damn...
I don't know if it would be considered a mental illness, it is more a product of the environment. These folks raise their kids to practice life according to a strict interpretation of a very brutal (imho) religion. Eye for an eye all that stuff. Cut off the hand of thieves etc.
I don't know if the head guys involved beleive the shit they preach, but they get the folks around them believing it and the head guys know that it most definitely has extreme sock value when shown to us.
I am beginning to think that everytime they do something like this that we should go round up about 100 of their guys and chop their heads off live on al jazeera, but that's just my New York roots talking there.