Man tortured for preaching Christianity

Saudi Arabia's religious police have imprisoned a Catholic foreign worker for "preaching Christianity" and allegedly selling drugs.

Brian Savio O'Connor's family in India and Catholic officials, insist, however, the drug charges are trumped up and his only "crime" was to be seen praying, according to the Compass Direct news service.

Brian O'Conner

The Indian citizen, who was arrested March 25, would face the death penalty for both accusations, but he has not been formally charged.

Catholic officials say O'Conner, 36, has been tortured and threatened with death if he does not renounce his faith and convert to Islam.

Compass Direct said O'Conner, a cargo agent for Saudia Airlines, was accosted by a religious police agent near his home in Riyadh, who harshly asked him, "Why did you not attend 'Salah' [evening prayers]?"

O'Conner showed the man his ID card, indicating he is a Christian, when another three men came up and tried to grab it. The men chased him into a shop where he was beaten, the news service said.

The Indian Christian told friends who visited him in prison he then was dragged to a religious police office where his legs were chained and he was hung upside down.

For the next seven hours, his captors alternately kicked and beat him in the chest and ribs, O'Conner claimed.

According to International Christian Concern, a U.S.-based advocacy group that first reported O'Connor's arrest, he was "whipped on his back and soles of his feet by electrical wires," causing intense pain.

O'Connor said at one point he was gasping for breath and moaning from the blows when a religious police officer placed a call to one of O'Conner's Saudi bosses. Laughing loudly, according to Compass Direct, the captor held the phone to O'Connor's mouth so the man on the line could hear the Christian's groans.

The Indian Bishop's Conference inquired about O'Conner in an official letter to the Saudi embassy in New Delhi but was ignored.

The U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights states bluntly "religious freedom does not exist" in Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom forbids all public expression of religion, except for its strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. No church buildings are allowed, and religious police have cracked down at times on worship in private homes. Saudis are forbidden by law from converting to another religion. Like O'Conner, some foreign Christians have been imprisoned in squalid conditions and tortured, and some have been beheaded.

The Saudi religious police reportedly allowed 15 Saudi girls to burn to death two years ago in Mecca when their school caught on fire. The police forced the female children to remain in the burning building rather than run outside without proper Islamic attire.

The Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House in Washington, a human rights advocacy group, said seven Saudi Muslims who advocated human rights and religious tolerance were arrested in March and remain in a Riyadh prison.

One of the prisoners, lawyer Abdul-Rahman Alahim, was jailed the day after he appeared on the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera to urge his government to free political prisoners and implement political reform.