A 23-year-old Dutchman is among four foreign tourists arrested for posing naked on a sacred Malaysian mountain.

The Dutchman, identified as Dylan from Ankeveen near Hilversum, turned himself into police with two others and will remain in custody for at least four days, his lawyer Ronny Cham told Nos.

Dylan, who faces three months in jail and a fine, is in good spirits, the lawyer said.

The Nos’s southeast Asia correspondent Melle Garschagen expects the case to be dealt with quietly because of the importance of tourism to the area. ‘Someone from the capital is going to make a phone call and ask “is this really necessary?”,’ Garschagen said.

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Two Canadians and a British woman have also been arrested. The four are part of a group of 10 who stripped off and posed for photos on Mount Kinabalu on May 30.

Locals blamed the ‘disrespect’ for the mountain spirits for an earthquake which killed 18 people on Friday.

Six other tourists are being hunted and will be caught, local police chief Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman told news agency AFP.