Sydneyanglicans.net Motor Mission blogger Julian Price has been arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of being an Israeli spy.
Mr Price and Sydney Anglican Nathan Brown have been riding motorbikes from India to Lebanon for the past six months encouraging persecuted Christians.
Early last week Mr Price, who is in his 20s, was returning from an Internet café in Beirut when he was stopped by soldiers.
It was just after midnight and Mr Price was only 200 metres from the home of a Christian family he had been staying with.
"They asked what I was doing walking around so late at night and where was my identification," Mr Price says.
"I told them I had just been at the internet cafe and was walking home to the place where I was staying. They asked the address, I said I wasn’t sure but it was only 200m away. They asked again if I had any identification and I said - no, it was in the house. Then they demanded to know my name and where I was from and what I was doing in Beirut."
Terrorist accusations
Mr Price was placed under armed guard and transported by jeep to a military base where he was interrogated by the commanding officer.
"He demanded to see some identification again and I explained to him where it was," Mr Price explains.
"I started to become a little concerned. I said ‘You can’t treat tourists like this, how do you expect anyone to visit if you are going to treat them like this?!’
"‘I don’t really think you are a tourist,’ the commanding officer told me bluntly. He told me I had the face of an Israeli terrorist."
The situation rapidly degenerated when a search of Mr Price revealed he was carrying a laptop and an electronic device which the attending officers believed he was using to record conversations.
The "device' was an iPod.
"They seemed convinced I was some sort of spy or terrorist," Mr Price says.
"[My interrogator] couldn’t believe I’d walk around at night with no identification unless I had something to hide."
Mr Price was bundled back into the jeep and driven for 30 minutes up into the surrounding mountains to a police station where he was confined to a concrete cell.
"Not knowing what else to do, I started to sing Shine Jesus Shine, over and over until my voice went all squeaky," Mr Price remembers.
"At that stage I gave thanks to God, I was inside and safe, then fell asleep."
The young man was rescued the next morning by a police officer, the father of a friend, who intervened on his behalf.
Arrest a common experience for Christians
Fellow traveller Nathan Brown, who recently returned to Sydney, is relieved to hear his friend is safe and sound.
He says that Julian's experience is not an unusual one for the believers living in many of the countries they travelled through together.
"I heard the news and I thought, "Julian is in God’s hands," he says.
"You have to trust God when things like that are going on. Here you trust money or friends to get you out of trouble. But those sort of situations breed a tougher faith in God."
Mr Brown says the Motor Mission knew arrest was part of the risk they would take in that part of the world.
"We thought it might be on the cards and we were mentally prepared for it," he says.
"I don’t necessarily feel worried. This is what the Christians are doing there every day over there."
Mr Price will continue travelling through the Middle East as part of the Motor Mission.
Go to Insight to read Julian Price’s first hand account
