500k Saudi documents leaked

Rasa - Whistleblower website WikiLeaks says it will publish over 500,000 Saudi diplomatic documents on the Internet over the upcoming weeks.

News ID: 2791

Date: 20 June 2015 - 16:39

RNA - In a Friday statement, WikiLeaks said internal reports from Saudi government organizations and communications between the country's embassies across the world will be included in the documents.

According to the statement, the transparency website has obtained e-mail communications between Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry and other countries.

WikiLeaks also announced that it has already released over 60,000 Saudi documents on its webpage, most of them in Arabic.

Classified reports from a number of Saudi institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom's General Intelligence Services, were among the published documents.

Many of the leaked materials, whose source is still unknown, carried green letterhead marked "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" or "Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

The documents indicate that the Saudi regime is considered a threat for its neighbors, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a press release.

The materials “lift the lid on a [sic] increasingly erratic and secretive dictatorship that has not only celebrated its 100th beheading this year, but which has also become a menace to its neighbors and itself,” Assange said.

He also noted that the documents “provide key insights into the Kingdom’s operations and how it has managed its alliances …, including through bribing and co-opting key individuals and institutions.”

Back in 2010, Assange won international prominence and angered the US administration by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents, including those related to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012 and secured political asylum from Quito after he lost a legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual abuse allegations. The anti-privacy campaigner has denied the accusations against him.

It is thought that Assange’s potential extradition to Sweden is a pretext for sending him to the US, where he is wanted over the massive release of classified US documents.

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