A court in İzmir, western Turkey, has accepted a prosecutor’s indictment charging U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson with criminal offences on behalf of two separate terrorist organisations, with an aim to “divide Turkey” between the pair. The charges carry a recommended sentence of up to 35 years, Turkish news site Diken reported on Tuesday. Brunson was arrested during the aftermath of the failed July 2016 coup attempt, which Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party blames on Islamist cleric Fethullah Gülen and an alleged criminal organisation they call the “Fetthullahist Terrorist Organisation”, or FETÖ. His arrest came around a year after fighting resumed between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist-designated group which has been in intermittent conflict with Turkish Armed Forces since launching a separatist insurgency in 1984. “Under the guise of an Evangelist pastor, Brunson acted more like an irregular warfare operative with an intelligence and psychological warfare doctrine,” the charge sheets said of the pastor, who had lived in the city of İzmir for 20 years before his arrest.

Source: GNN Liberia March 20, 2018 18:56 UTC