Key Points
- The footage of the incident has gone viral.
- He could face a maximum sentence of 14 months in prison if convicted.
- In a social media post, Mr McArthur has denied any wrongdoing.
An Australian man is facing more than a year in jail after allegedly spitting in the face of an imam at an Indonesian mosque.
Brenton Craig Abbas Abdullah McArthur has been charged over the incident at a mosque in Bandung, Indonesia that was captured on CCTV.
The footage has gone viral and shows a man wearing a baseball cap entering the mosque and talking to the imam before appearing to spit in his face.
The imam flees as the man casually walks away.
Indonesian police said Mr McArthur was staying at a nearby hotel and they used his passport to track down and arrest him at Soekarno-Hatta Airport as he tried to board a flight to Australia.
"We immediately ask(ed) immigration to stop him and cancel him from leaving the country," Bandung police chief Budi Sartono said in a statement.
"We immediately pick(ed) him up at the airport and (took) him to the Bandung Police Station for interrogation."
His resident visa was expired and Australian Embassy officials accompanied him to the police station, according to local media.
Indonesian news website Kumparan reported Mr McArthur has now been charged with Articles 335 and 315 of the Criminal Code, which regulate unpleasant acts and insults.
He could face a maximum sentence of 14 months in prison if convicted.
In a social media post, Mr McArthur has denied any wrongdoing and claimed he is the victim.
"Stop crying all your racist tears. I am a Muslim and this is just racist, threatening a bule and laughing being a coward," .
A bule is an Indonesian word used to describe foreigners, specifically people of European descent.
Imam Basri Anwar told another Indonesian news site that Mr McArthur was "disturbed" by the recitation of the Quran over a loudspeaker.
"When it's Clean Friday, there's a recitation of the Quran. I think he (a bule male) feels disturbed," he said.
Mr McArthur lists his job as an English teacher and game developer, and his home town as Gosnells in Perth, Western Australia.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman said it stands ready to provide consular assistance to an Australian man detained in Indonesia.
"Due to privacy obligations, we are unable to provide further information," she told AAP.
It comes after 23-year-old Queensland man Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones publicly apologised after he was arrested following a naked drunken rampage through the Indonesian province of Aceh.
