RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A prominent foreign pastor in Saudi Arabia has fled Riyadh after a member of the religious police and others threatened him three times in one week.
Two of the incidents included threats to kill house church pastor Yemane Gebriel of Eritrea. On Jan. 28, Gebriel escaped to an undisclosed city in Saudi Arabia. A father of eight who has lived and worked as a private driver in Saudi Arabia for 25 years, Gebriel said that Jan. 10 he found an unsigned note on his vehicle threatening to kill him if he did not leave the country.
On Jan. 13, he said religious police member Abdul Aziz and others forced him from his van and told him to leave the country.
“There was a note on my van saying, ‘If you do not leave the country, we will kill you,’” Gebriel said. “Three days after that, [Aziz] said, ‘You’re still working here, why don’t you go out of the country?’” Two days later, Gebriel said, four masked men — apparently Saudis — in a small car cut off the van he was driving and threatened to kill him if he did not flee the country.
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