13 charged over Mass in Saudi hotel

Thirteen Filipinos have been charged with proselytising in Saudi Arabia after being arrested during a private Roman Catholic Mass celebrated in a Riyadh hotel last week, a Saudi newspaper has said.

The Filipinos, one of whom is a Catholic priest, were briefly detained for organising the service raided by the Muslim kingdom's ultra-conservative religious police, Arab News said.

About 150 expatriates attended the Mass, the newspaper said.

"They (the 13] were charged with proselytising," it quoted the Philippine Embassy's charg d'affaires in Riyadh as saying. They were later released on bail, the paper added.

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest sites, applies an austere form of Sunni Islam that confines any form of non-Muslim worship to the privacy of homes. Christians often hold services in hotel conference rooms.

Ibrahim al-Mugaiteb, head of the independent Saudi Human Rights First Society, said the overall situation for Christians had improved since King Abdullah took office in 2005. "The fact that they were only briefly detained shows a change," he said.

Converting Muslims is a crime in Saudi Arabia punishable by death, although such verdicts have rarely been handed out by Saudi courts, which are controlled by Muslim clerics.

The world's top oil exporter is home to several million expatriates, many non-Muslims.