Amerikansk pastor inför rätta i Turkiet – kan släppas

Andrew Craig Brunson (born January 3, 1968) is an American pastor in Turkey, arrested in October 2016 during the purges occurring after the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, along with the arrests of tens of thousands of Turkish military personnel, civil servants, educators, academics, dissidents, and journalists. Brunson is an evangelical pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, a small Protestant church with about 25 congregants. T-Online describes the church as having been held in a room in a tenement. On September 28, 2017, Erdoğan unsuccessfully proposed exchanging Brunson for Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic preacher accused of supporting the coup attempt from his exile in the United States. On July 26, 2018, US Vice President Pence called on Erdoğan to release Brunson or face significant sanctions. On August 1, 2018, the U.S. Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on two top Turkish government officials who were involved in the detention of Brunson, Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.The prosecution in the trial uses witnesses whose identities are concealed through voice and face distortion. The witnesses for the prosecution are testifying through video monitors.A 2018 controversy between the Trump administration and the Erdogan administration regarding the case has been one of the more visible focal points in the decline of international relations between the two countries. Economic sanctions and tariffs have appeared, with the case being cited in relation to them.