Three Femen women held in Tunis after topless protest.

Three Femen women held in Tunis after topless protest.(ABC).

Tunisian police seized three foreign activists who disrobed in front of the Ministry of Justice on Wednesday to protest against the jailing of a Tunisian member of the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN.

The three women, described by FEMEN earlier as one German and two French, approached the entrance to the ministry wearing coats which they took off, revealing naked torsos with "Free Amina" and other slogans written across their stomachs.

Wearing just jean shorts, the women chanted "Free Amina" and carried banners calling for her release before people in the crowd attempted to cover them.

The women were there for just a few minutes before police surrounded them, pulled them off the gates of the ministry and hustled them into a nearby station as an angry crowd, many of them lawyers working at the ministry, gathered.

"This is against our religion," said Fatima Zahaouadi, a young woman wearing the black robes of a lawyer but not wearing the conservative headscarf. "For these women to take off their clothes as part of freedom of expression is against our religion and the traditions of Arab-Muslim Tunisian society."

The crowd surrounded the police station and when the activists were transferred to a nearby building the crowed surged forward before being fended off by police.

"The ministry of justice is not a house of ill repute," said Fawzia Dridi, an angry bystander.

Tunisian woman Amina Tyler scandalized society by posting topless pictures online in March in a FEMEN-inspired protest in which she scrawled "my body is my own and not your honor," on herself. She was later taken into hiding by her family after conservative preachers issued death threats against her.

The 19-year-old said last month she wanted to do one last topless protest before she left the country to study journalism in France and was arrested May 19 in the religious center of Kairouan where an ultraconservative Muslim group was attempting to hold a conference.

Tyler was charged with carrying a dangerous object, apparently a canister of pepper spray, and will appear before a judge Thursday.

A member of FEMEN who identified herself as Inna told The Associated Press by email Tuesday that the activists were from France and Germany and were protesting the treatment of women in the Arab world.

"We are attacking the Ministry of Justice one day before the trial for Tunisian FEMEN prisoner Amina to demand to let Amina free and to give up Islamists tradition judging women's liberation," she wrote. "FEMEN is planning first topless action in Arab country as a sign of a big changes ... Femen is announcing the women's spring that (is) starting in Tunisia."Hmmmm....Read the full story here.