US President Donald Trump met at the White House on Saturday with American priest Andrew Branson, who was released by Turkish authorities after two years in detention in Turkey for supporting a terrorist organization.
The US priest arrived at a military base on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., with his wife Norin after a Turkish court released him to prison. He also canceled his house arrest so he could return home.
The freed priest thanked Trump and members of Congress when he received him.
On Friday, the Turkish court sentenced to 3 years, one month and 15 days to Branson, with the lifting of house arrest and travel ban.
The sentence means the priest's release, because according to Turkish law, a person sentenced to three years' imprisonment after two years in prison is released, which happened with Branson.
Observers at Branson's Court described the play, in which four of them retracted their testimony, saying they either misunderstood, or that what they said was heard in the media, and that they were not the source of the testimony.
The NBC News reported earlier Thursday that the United States and Turkey had reached an agreement under which Branson would be released and certain charges against him would be dropped during the next hearing of his trial scheduled for Friday.
The station quoted officials and a third person familiar with the matter as saying they expected Branson to return to his home in North Carolina in the coming days after the Turkish government released him.
The sources said that the agreement reached by the parties, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September, to drop the Turkish judiciary in Friday's hearing, a number of charges against the American cleric.
