A man and two friends who snatched a 17-year-old Saudi boy near his house and drove away to rape him freed the boy in the middle of the road after he apparently felt guilty, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

The three men had bundled the boy into their car in the central province of Al-Qasseem and were on their way to a deserted area before they stopped at a petrol station for fuel, Sabq Arabic language daily said.

“At the petrol station, one of the captors waited for his two friends to get away from the car, opened the door and told the boy to run away apparently after his conscience woke up,” the paper said.

“The boy kept running until he reached a police centre in a village, where told reported the incident and gave them descriptions of the captors and the car.”