US Vice President Mike Pence has threatened NATO ally Turkey with economic sanctions over a detained American pastor held on terror and espionage charges, AP reported. If Ankara does not take immediate action to free Andrew Craig Brunson, the US “will impose severe economic sanctions on Turkey,” Pence said in Washington on Thursday at the end of a three-day conference on religious freedom. Brunson, 50, an evangelical Christian pastor originally from North Carolina, was let out of jail Wednesday, after 1 1/2 years, to serve house arrest, according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency. President Donald Trump said on Twitter last week that the pastor’s detention was “a total disgrace.”