Who is Andrew Brunson?
The detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson for almost two years has created a major diplomatic rift between Nato allies Turkey and the United States.
The US citizen, 50, has lived in Turkey for 23 years and is the pastor of a small Presbyterian church in Izmir, on the Aegean coast.
The father of three has been held in a Turkish prison since October 7, 2016, when he was summoned to a police station after he applied for a visa renewal, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said.
Court documents from December 9, 2016, show that Mr Brunson was charged with “membership in an armed terrorist organisation”.
He was accused by Turkish authorities of having links to the Gulen Movement and later the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party.
The preacher Fethullah Gulen, once a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and now in exile in the US, is accused by Turkey of being behind the failed military coup in July 2016.
Tens of thousands of Turkish public sector workers,
soldiers and officials have been accused of having links to the outlawed Gulen Movement. They have been dismissed from posts or arrested after the coup.
The Economist magazine reported that Mr Brunson’s wife Norine was briefly arrested at the same time and released after 13 days.
The commission says that after Mr Brunson’s arrest, he was denied visits from parishioners who brought food, clothes and water.
Turkey initially tried to deny him access to US consulate staff and his lawyers.
A letter from February last year signed by 78 members of the US Congress to Mr Erdogan said: “There appears to be no evidence to substantiate the charges against him for membership in an armed terrorist organisation.”
In September that year, Mr Erdogan suggested that the US could swap Mr Brunson for 77-year -old Mr Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania.
Mr Erdogan said at the time that Mr Brunson “was not a hostage’.
Mrs Brunson has led the campaign for her husband’s release and met
then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in March last year to discuss the case.
In August last year, the prosecutors submitted new evidence of the charges against Mr Brunson and the case against him went ahead, the state Anadolu news agency reported.
There was no indication of the nature of the evidence used against the pastor.
On July 18, US President Donald Trump became personally and very publically involved. He tweeted a call to Mr Erdogan for Mr Brunson’s release, describing him as a “wonderful Christian husband and father” and saying his detention was a “total disgrace”.
Mr Trump first threatened sanctions on Turkey in another tweet on July 26, a day after Mr Brunson was moved from prison to house arrest.