US pastor goes on trial in Turkey after arrest in coup crackdown

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AFP

An American pastor has gone on trial in Turkey charged with aiding a terrorist organisation, in a case that has frayed relations between Turkey and the US.

Andrew Brunson is accused of helping a group led by Fethullah Gulen, an exiled Muslim preacher who Turkish officials allege was behind a failed 2016 coup.

Mr Brunson, who ran a Protestant church in the Turkish city of Izmir, was arrested in October 2016.

If convicted, he faces up to 35 years behind bars.

Mr Brunson, 50, an evangelical pastor originally from North Carolina, appeared in court on Monday in the town of Aliaga, alongside his lawyer Cem Halavurt.

Also in court were Sam Brownback, the US ambassador at large for religious freedoms, and US Senator Thom Tillis.

Mr Halavurt has called the charges “totally unfounded”, and says they are based on testimony from secret informants.

He told the AFP news agency ahead of the hearing that his client was “both nervous, but also excited because it is the first time he will appear before a judge. He has expectations and a hope”.

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Prosecutors say Mr Brunson worked with a group led by Mr Gulen, who is living in exile in Pennsylvania in the US, as well as with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey has designated both Mr Gulen’s network and the PKK as terror groups, and accused My Gulen of fomenting an attempted military coup in the country in 2016, in which at least 250 people died.

Mr Gulen has denied any involvement in the attempted coup, and the European Union has said it does not share Turkey’s view that his network is a terror organisation.

Mr Brunson, who has lived in Turkey for 23 years, serving as pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church, was among those swept up in a massive crackdown by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following the failed coup.

More than 50,000 people were arrested in the crackdown, 100,000 state employees fired and newspapers and TV stations shuttered.

Turkey initially accused the pastor of being a member of both Mr Gulen’s network and the PKK, but apparently adjusted the charges before the trial, accusing him of working on the groups’ behalf.

Tense relations

Relations between Turkey and the US were already strained over American support for Kurdish militias in Syria, which have been targeted by Turkish forces.

Turkey has formally sought the extradition of Mr Gulen, but the US says it has not been given sufficient evidence to back up the request.

In September, Mr Erdogan raised the prospect of a swap, exchanging Mr Brunson for Mr Gulen, but the idea was dismissed by the US authorities, who have pressed Turkey to release the pastor.

According to CeCe Heil, executive senior counsel at US Christian group the American Center for Law and Justice, Mr Brunson has lost 50lb (23kg) during his detention and been denied private meetings with his lawyer.

Mr Brunson’s daughter, Jacqueline Furnari, told a US commission investigating the crackdown in Turkey that she had postponed her wedding in her father’s absence.

“I’m still waiting for my dad to walk me down the aisle, and I’m still waiting for that father-daughter dance,” she said.

The trial continues.

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Ahead Of New Book, Comey Defends Handling Of Clinton Email Scandal

In this image released by ABC News, correspondent George Stephanopoulos, left, appears with former FBI director James Comey for a taped interview that aired during a primetime 20/20 special on Sunday.

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Ralph Alswang/AP

In this image released by ABC News, correspondent George Stephanopoulos, left, appears with former FBI director James Comey for a taped interview that aired during a primetime 20/20 special on Sunday.

Ralph Alswang/AP

Updated at 6 a.m. ET

Former FBI Director James Comey says he believed that the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton sent or received classified email from a private server while she was secretary of state was a “no-win” case for him that would further polarize an already deeply divided electorate.

However, speaking to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos ahead of the release of his new book, A Higher Loyalty, Comey defended his characterization of Clinton’s conduct as “extremely careless.” However, he conceded that he “should’ve worked harder to find a way to convey that it’s more than just the ordinary mistake, but it’s not criminal behavior.”

Stephanopoulos asked about a September 2015 meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch just before Comey was to acknowledge publicly that the FBI had launched an investigation into Clinton’s use of private email.

Lynch, he said, agreed that the announcement should be made, but asked him to “call it a matter” instead of an investigation.

Comey says he pushed back, but that Lynch was firm: “Just call it a matter,” she said.

“[It] did worry me that the attorney general’s direction was tracking that effort to avoid using the word ‘investigation,’ he said. “[To] be honest, it gave me a bad feeling.”

Comey said by early 2016 the FBI had received “classified information” that “raised the question of whether Loretta Lynch was controlling me and the FBI and keeping the Clinton campaign informed about our investigation.”

Stephanopoulos: Did you investigate it?

Comey: We did.

Stephanopoulos: And what did you find?

Comey: Found no indication that it was true.

“I didn’t see any indication that Loretta Lynch was trying to cover this investigation for the Clinton campaign or direct me in any way,” Comey said. “She stayed away from it as far as I could tell. But the point of it is I knew there was material that might hit the public square any moment, that would allow people to argue powerfully that there was monkey business going on.”

In a statement released Sunday, Lynch insisted that throughout the investigation, “I did what I always do: rise above politics and uphold the law.”

In the statement, published by Axios, Lynch said she had known Comey for 30 years and “If he had any concerns regarding the email investigation, classified or not, he had ample opportunities to raise them with me both privately and in meetings. He never did.”

By the spring of 2016, Comey said it was becoming clear that no charges would be brought against Clinton and he began drafting a statement explaining that decision.

“There was nothing she said that [FBI investigators] believed we could prove was false,” he said. “And there was nothing else they needed to run down to see if she was testifying to us falsely. And so the view of the team was, ‘We’re done here. Our view of this case is firm. No prosecutor would prosecute this case.’”

Comey said he initially did not pay much attention to an unscheduled meeting between Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in an FBI airplane on the tarmac at an airport in Phoenix in June. That meeting, just days before Comey initially said the investigation was over — became a major firestorm, with many Republicans saying it showed the former president trying to influence the outcome of the investigation in his wife’s favor.

“I don’t know what they talked about. I credit Loretta Lynch [because] I think she’s an honest person, saying, ‘We talked about grandchildren and other things,’” the former FBI director said.

“I find it hard to believe that Bill Clinton would’ve tried to obstruct justice by walking across the tarmac in front of … in front of a bunch of FBI agents up the … stairs and onto an FBI plane,” he said.

In the waning days of the 2016 presidential election, Comey wrote a letter to Congress outlining the existence of hundreds of thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails discovered on a laptop belonging to disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose wife, Huma Abedin, was a long-time Clinton adviser. That letter, some analysts contend, was enough to hand Trump the margin of victory in a very tight race.

At the time, Comey said his team advised him there was no way to go through the trove of new emails by election day and he agonized over the decision to make their existence known so close to the national vote.

“[All] of us were operating in a world where the polls were showing that Donald Trump had no chance,” he said, but he hoped the letter did not sway the election.

Even if it did, however, Comey said he still thinks it was the right thing to do. He said he hoped that people would see “I’m not trying to help a candidate or hurt a candidate; I’m trying to do the right thing.”

“And you can come up with different conclusions. Reasonable people would’ve chosen a different door for reasonable reasons,” he said. “But it’s just not fair to say we were doing it for some illegitimate reason.”

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