A Turkish court could decide today on the release of the US cleric
The trial of US religious Andrew Brunson, arrested two years ago in Turkey accused of terrorist links, celebrates a new hearing that has aroused much expectation that his release will be decreed, which would ease the tension between Ankara and Washington.
Brunson has been in pretrial detention for two years, but since July he has been under house arrest in the city of Izmir.
Today has been transferred between large security measures to the court where the fourth hearing of his trial is held, reports the Turkish agency Anadolu.
The Prosecutor's Office has requested 35 years in prison on charges of terrorist links, which the defenders of the Protestant missionary consider absurd.
Last August, the Turkish Justice rejected on three occasions the requests for release made by the lawyers of the religious, who has lived in Turkey for 20 years.
Brunson is accused of having conspired with both the Turkish Kurdish Kurdish guerrilla, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and the Islamist brotherhood of the exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, which Ankara attributes to the failed coup of 2016.
The US government, which is calling for the immediate release of the religious, has imposed sanctions on two Turkish ministers for the stay in prison of Brunson, and has doubled the tariffs on steel and aluminum in Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently asserted that Justice in his country is independent and that he can not interfere.
However, Erdogan has linked in the past the release of Brunson with the extradition request that Turkey has made about Gülen, who resides in the US.
