The United States Treasury issued sanctions against Turkish officials including Minister of Justice Abdülhamit Gül and Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu for having responsibility for the detention and house arrest of spy pastor Andrew Craig Brunson, who has been detained since December 2016.

In the statement made by the Treasury Department, Gül and Soylu's property in the United States were blocked, preventing US people and institutions from doing business with them.

Soylu: The US sent men from 10 thousand miles away and...

The sanction over the ministers took attention that the decision was taken after the Turkish Interior Minister Soylu's speech in Turkiye's Karabük on Wednesday

"The people who support the terror in Europe in the West, those who give the right to live in the countries, ones who send 5 thousand trucks weapons, those who train them with their professional killers, those who advise them, who give them tactics, reassure them, they sent men to Qandil to train their killers, those who try to violate the unity of Anatolia with the money they send (to terrorists) through their associations, they an 11-month-old baby and her mother. This murder cannot be covered. No one can say anything to our operations, nor can they say the trials against our courts, nor can they say who we are going to trade with. The PKK was baby killer yesterday and also it is baby killer today."

"The United States is behind the coup"

A few days after the coup attempt on July 15, Soylu, the Minister of Labor and Social Security in that period, made a live broadcast on a private television channel and said, "The United States is behind the coup. A few magazines publishing there are in actions for a few months. We give messages to the US for the Fethullah Gülen. The US has to give us Fethullah Gülen."

The Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 enables the U.S. government to target entities that it claims participate in human rights violations or corruption anywhere in the world. The act allows for travel bans, seizure of U.S. assets and prohibitions on conducting business with U.S. entities. (ILKHA)