Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Pastor Brunson

Dry Bones cartoon, Turkey, Erdogan, Islamism, barbarian, Christian, Pastor Brunson, Brunson,
According to "the European Centre for Law and Justice":
Andrew Craig Brunson is a United States citizen and pastor from North Carolina. For over 23 years, he has lived peacefully in Turkey together with his wife and three children, who were educated in Turkish schools, and two of whom were born in the country. All this time, Andrew Brunson has been involved in serving as pastor of the Resurrection church in the city of Izmir. As the religious leader of the congregation, Pastor Brunson was known and respected by his own church and other Christian congregations, and the Brunson family have shown themselves to be people who love and respect Turkey and the Turkish society.

As a religious worker, Pastor Brunson specially worked to keep political activities away from himself and his church. As explained by his lawyer, he considered that establishing political and financial relationships with governments or other groups would sully the religious beliefs in which he believes and he always defended this viewpoint.

On October 7, 2016, as he arrived home, he found a written summons to report with his passport to a local police station. Believing the summons was related to his routine application for a renewal of his residence visa, Pastor Brunson promptly reported to the Izmir police that same day. There, he was informed that an order of deportation had been entered against him, as he had suddenly been deemed a threat to national security.

From that day, Pastor Brunson was held in detention at the Harmandali Detention Centre and was denied access to an attorney until December 9th 2016 – over two months later – when he was transferred in the middle of the night to a high security prison in Izmir. At that time, he was informed that he was being detained as a suspect, although “evidence had yet to be gathered”, on the grounds of Membership in an Armed Terrorist Organization. Indeed, on December 9th 2016, the Izmir 5th Penal Court of Peace ordered that he continued to be detained pending the investigation.-more

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