4 arrested in Libya for trying to spread Christianity

[NBCNews]

  By ReutersFour foreigners have been arrested in the eastern Libyan city of  Benghazi on suspicion of being Christian missionaries and printing books  about Christianity, a security official said on Saturday.

"They  were arrested on Tuesday at a publishing house where they were printing  thousands of books that called for conversion to Christianity,"  security official Hussein Bin Hmeid said.

"Proselytizing is  forbidden in Libya. We are a 100 percent Muslim country and this kind of  action affects our national security."

Follow @NBCNewsWorldHmeid said the  government-affiliated security apparatus called the Preventative  Security, for which he is a spokesman, had arrested an Egyptian, a South  African, a Korean and a Swede who was travelling on a U.S. passport.

"We  are still holding interrogations and will hand them over to the Libyan  intelligence authorities in a couple of days," Hmeid said, without  giving further details.

The Preventative Security apparatus is a  parallel security body created during the 2011 war that ousted leader Moammar  Gadhafi and made up of several rebel brigades that fought in the  conflict.

Libya's central government has yet to impose its  authority on a myriad of armed groups that have yet to lay down their  arms, and with skeletal national security forces, often relies on them  for security.

Reporting by Hadeel Al-Shalchi; Editing by Alison Williams

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

NBC News