A US pastor who has been held in Turkey on what the Trump administration said were bogus terror and espionage charges was sprung free Friday after being convicted and sentenced to time served.
A judge imposed a sentence of three years and a month on Andrew Brunson, 50, of North Carolina, who lived in Turkey for over 22 years and was detained in October 2016 for allegedly helping rebels in a coup.
“I am an innocent man. I love Jesus, I love Turkey,” the evangelical pastor told the court before the judge’s ruling, which prompted Brunson to break into tears in the court near the city of Izmir.
Asked whether Brunson would head to the United States, his attorney Ismail Cem Halavurt said: “He will probably leave.”
Turkish President Recep Erdoğan had said he could not interfere in a court case, but US officials said Thursday that an agreement between the two countries to free Brunson was negotiated on the sidelines of last month’s the UN General Assembly, The Washington Post reported.
The officials said the deal would include the lifting of US sanctions in exchange for reduced charges that would allow the pastor to either be sentenced for time served or serve any remaining sentence in the United States.
Brunson is one of thousands caught up in a sweeping government crackdown that followed a failed coup against the Turkish government in July 2016.
The case sparked a diplomatic dispute between Ankara and Washington, which imposed tariffs against the NATO ally.
In July, President Trump demanded that Erdoğan release Brunson, whom he described as”a great Christian, family man and wonderful human being.”
“He is suffering greatly. This innocent man of faith should be released immediately!” the president said.
Brunson was released on house arrest in July due to health reasons.
Prosecutors accused him of being linked both to Kurdish separatists and the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey wants to try as the chief coup-plotter. Gulen has denied the allegations.
The prosecutors had initially sought a 35-year sentence for Brunson, but later reduced it to 10 years during the trial.
They accused him of supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a strongly secular and leftist organization that has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey.
Brunson’s indictment quoted a witness as saying members of his Resurrection Church in Izmir province wore the “flags and pennants of the PKK terrorist organization,” according to The Washington Post.
But in court Friday, several witnesses for the prosecution gave sometimes conflicting testimony.
One of them, Levent Kalkan, said that investigators misunderstood his initial testimony that had implicated the pastor in harboring coup suspects in 2016.
The man that Kalkan had testified witnessed the protection of the suspects said in court Friday that he had seen no such thing.
“I never told Levent that,” insisted the witness, Yilmaz Demirjan.
Speaking in Turkish before he was released, Brunson said: “I never met any PKK fighters.