Andrew Brunson

Andrew Craig Brunson (born January 3, 1968) is an American pastor and a teaching elder of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Brunson was an evangelical pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, a small Protestant church with about 24 congregants.

German news service T-Online describes the church as having been held in a room in a tenement.

Brunson was arrested in October 2016 in Turkey, where he had lived since the mid-1990s, for being associated with the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) and the PKK as well as espionage, during the purges following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt against the democratically elected government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (along with the arrests of tens of thousands of Gulenist Turkish military personnel, civil servants, educators, academics, dissidents, and journalists).

Brunson, who was applying for Turkish permanent residency, was imprisoned on October 7, 2016, as part of the purges that followed the failed 2016 coup attempt.

His wife, Norine, was initially arrested alongside him, but was released after 13 days.

For a time Brunson was held with 21 others in a cell that was made for eight prisoners.

He reportedly lost over 50 lb while he was in prison.

Turkish prosecutors charged Brunson with involvement in the failed July 2016 coup attempt.

Turkish media reported that Brunson had been accused of espionage and attempting to overthrow the government.

He was originally charged with having links to FETÖ and PKK (both are considered terrorist organizations by the Turkish state).

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 August 1, 2018, the United States 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.

On August 9, U.S. President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Turkish products.

Erdogan followed with tariffs on U.S. products.

On October 12, 2018, Brunson was convicted, by Turkish authorities, on the charge of aiding terrorism, but sentenced to time served.

He was released from Turkish custody and immediately returned to the United States.

Andrew Brunson is originally from Black Mountain, North Carolina.

He is married and has three children.

Brunson lived in Turkey for 23 years where he served as pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church.

He was moved to house arrest on July 25, 2018.

The Turkish government primarily claimed that Brunson was a member of the Gülen movement, but also claimed that he worked with the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and claimed that he was involved with American espionage, among other things.

In addition, they claimed that he was interested in overthrowing the Turkish government and that he supposedly helped plan the coup, which he denied.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed that the case was triggered by a complaint from a translator.

The Turkish government claimed that they didn't know about the case until the consulate addressed it.

The trial caused a major public diplomatic row between the United States and Turkey.

The United States stood firm in its argument that the trial was unacceptable because the government "has not seen credible evidence Mr. Brunson is guilty of a crime and are convinced that he is innocent"., as the State Department said in a statement.

The Trump administration insisted that the Turkish government free Brunson entirely.

Turkey objected to this on the basis of this being an interference with the country's sovereignty.

Erdogan objected to the idea of interfering with the courts, arguing that he shouldn't on the basis that they are independent.

In May 2018, a hearing for his case occurred in Aliaga that lasted eleven hours.

The judge dismissed all of Brunson's defense witnesses without listening to any of their testimony.

The prosecution used secret witnesses who "testified through video monitors that distorted their faces and voices in order to conceal their identities".

Sandra Jolley, vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom attended the case, and released the following statement:

"We leave the courthouse with serious concerns. Today's eleven hours of proceedings were dominated by wild conspiracies, tortured logic, and secret witnesses, but no real evidence to speak of. Upon these rests a man's life" She described the judge's decision not to allow any of the witnesses called by Brunson's defense to testify on his behalf as "simply unconscionable".

The judge would relent in a later hearing.

Hearings were held on July 13, 2018.

At his final hearing on October 12, 2018, several prosecution witnesses retracted their earlier statements which led to his release that same day.

Brunson was held for over a year without charges.

In 2019, Brunson published a memoir about his ordeal.