{"id":60124,"date":"2015-06-29T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=60124"},"modified":"2015-06-23T17:15:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T16:15:33","slug":"saudi-arabia-tells-citizens-to-ignore-latest-wikileaks-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/06\/saudi-arabia-tells-citizens-to-ignore-latest-wikileaks-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia Tells Citizens to Ignore Latest WikiLeaks Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

61,000 leaked cables give rare insight into kingdom\u2019s habit of buying influence and monitoring dissidents.<\/em><\/p>\n

21 Jun 2015 – <\/em>Saudi Arabia<\/a> has warned its citizens to ignore thousands of its diplomatic documents leaked by the transparency site WikiLeaks, which give a rare insight into the kingdom\u2019s habit of buying influence and monitoring dissidents.<\/p>\n

The 61,000 Saudi cables<\/a>, the first tranche of 500,000 promised by Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, also show the country\u2019s sharp focus on its strategic rival Iran and the revolution in Egypt, and support for allies and clients in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Nothing yet published matches embarrassing revelations about the Saudis in WikiLeaks\u2019 2010 release of US diplomatic documents, which reported King Abdullah<\/a> calling to \u201ccut off the head of the [Iranian] snake\u201d as well as drink- and drug-fuelled partying <\/a>by minor royals in Jeddah.<\/p>\n

But routine secret correspondence from the foreign ministry in Riyadh and embassies abroad, some from as recently as April this year, catalogues many of the preoccupations of the conservative monarchy, the world\u2019s biggest oil exporter, especially during the turbulent period of the Arab spring from early 2011.<\/p>\n

According to one document, Gulf states were prepared to pay $10bn (\u00a36.3bn) to secure the release of the deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, which appears to support a previous claim about this by a leading Muslim Brotherhood politician.<\/p>\n

A 2012 cable reveals concern that Iran was receiving \u201cflirting American messages\u201d that suggested the US did not oppose a peaceful Iranian nuclear programme so long as it had guarantees, including from Russia. Others from that period show Saudi plans for an anti-Iran satellite TV channel to broadcast in Persian from Bahrain, and plans to disrupt Iranian channels.<\/p>\n

The cables show Riyadh often seems worried about any advantage for Tehran: one document explains that if an Arab summit conference were held as scheduled in Baghdad in 2012, it would mean \u201chanding Iraq to Iran\u201d. Cables also show efforts to back opponents of Nouri al-Maliki, the then Shia prime minister of Iraq, who was close to Iran.<\/p>\n

Correspondence from the embassy in Beirut shows contacts with the Lebanese Forces leader, Samir Geagea, over cash payments to ease financial problems. Geagea had publicly defended Saudi Arabia and opposed president Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and generally shown \u201creadiness to do whatever the kingdom asks of him\u201d, the cables say.<\/p>\n

Al-Akhbar, the Beirut newspaper that is publishing the documents with WikiLeaks<\/a>, is a supporter of Assad and Iran\u2019s Lebanese militia ally Hezbollah. The documents examined so far do not mention Saudi backing for anti-Assad rebels, most likely because these are handled by the country\u2019s intelligence service.<\/p>\n

Correspondence from the Saudi embassy in London shows filming of protesters and a discussion of legal action against the Guardian over an article by Saad al-Faqih<\/a>, an Islamist. An appearance by Faqih on Egypt\u2019s ON TV channel brought a proposal to \u201cfind out how to co-opt it\u201d. But the billionaire owner of the station, Naguib Sawiris, did not want to be \u201copposed to the kingdom\u2019s policies\u201d and he ordered that Faqih never be interviewed again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extent of Egypt\u2019s ruling establishment\u2019s self-prostitution to Saudi money is both embarrassing and unsurprising,\u201d commented the writer Iyad al-Baghdadi, in one of many weekend social media reactions since the documents were released. Ala\u2019a Shehabi, a Bahraini dissident concerned by the Saudi intervention in her country, called the trove a \u201crare insight into the most opaque regime in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Toby Matthiesen, a Cambridge University academic, said: \u201cFor Saudi experts there is little surprising so far \u2026 but the details will hurt a lot of corrupt people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents include several references to \u201chostile\u201d media. An undated note describes the influence of journalists sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood on the Qatar-owned channel al-Jazeera, which has often fallen foul of the Saudis. The papers also show how in 2010 they purchased hundreds or thousands of subscriptions to publications in Damascus, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Kuwait, Jordan and Mauritania in order to secure favourable coverage.<\/p>\n

Influence and money are recurring themes. Reports from Sana\u2019a state that the proceeds of the sale of 3m barrels of oil given to Yemen in 2012 never reached the country\u2019s treasury. Another document accuses Qatar of paying a Yemeni sheikh to foment rebellion in the army and to prevent the 2012 presidential election of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.<\/p>\n

The Sydney Morning Herald found documents<\/a> with instructions from the Saudi government to its Canberra embassy relating to the payment of large subsidies to prominent Arabic newspapers and media organisations in Australia.<\/p>\n

The Sunday Times reported that a document in the cache showed Saudi Arabia was prepared to pay the BBC correspondent Frank Gardner \u00a31m in compensation after he was shot in Riyadh by al-Qaida. Gardner told the newspaper the compensation never materialised.<\/p>\n

On Sunday the Saudi foreign ministry spokesman Osama Nugali warned citizens not to \u201callow enemies of the state to achieve their intentions in regards to exchanging or publishing any documents,\u201d many of which, he said, had been \u201cfabricated in a very obvious manner\u201d.<\/p>\n

WikiLeaks did not say where it obtained the documents, but it referred in a press release to Riyadh\u2019s statement in May that it had suffered a breach of its computer networks \u2013 an attack later claimed by a group calling itself the Yemen Cyber Army.<\/p>\n

The Guardian has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the documents.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Jun 2015 – Saudi Arabia has warned its citizens to ignore the 61,000 diplomatic documents leaked by the transparency site WikiLeaks, which give a rare insight into the kingdom\u2019s habit of buying influence and monitoring dissidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}