Police have arrested two men for suspected theft from donations boxes from the Masjid Sultan mosque along Muscat Street on Thursday.

Staff at the mosque had alerted the police at around 10am when they saw the two men - aged 29 and 30 - behaving suspiciously in the building.

When the police arrived, the staff handed over the 30-year-old suspect, who was carrying a haversack. They had detained him and told the officers that he was meddling with the donation boxes with another man in the mosque earlier. Police recovered $195 from the haversack.

His 29-year-old accomplice, who had escaped, was arrested later near the airport, and police recovered a briefcase containing more than $1,500.

If convicted of theft, the men face a jail term of up to seven years and a fine.