Four foreign Christian workers in Libya have been arrested on suspicion of spreading Christianity and giving out Christian literature in Benghazi.

A police spokesman said one of the suspects is a Swedish-American and the others are from South Africa, Egypt, and South Korea.

"We are still holding interrogations and will hand them over to the Libyan intelligence authorities in a couple of days," police spokesman Hussein bin Hamid said.

Police arrested them Tuesday and confiscated some 45,000 books in their possession. Another 25,000 reportedly were distributed.

Preaching the Gospel is against the law in the mostly Muslim nation.

Prior to the 2011 revolution that felled Moamar Gaddafi, Libya was home to approximately 100,000 Christians.

"Now only a few thousand remain," Father Dominique Rezeau of the Saint Francis near central Tripoli said.