Wikileaks begins releasing 500,000 secret Saudi papers online
WIKILEAKS is in the process of publishing more than 500,000 Saudi diplomatic documents to the internet, the transparency website said yesterday, in a move that echoes its famous release of US State Department cables in 2010.
The website said in a statement that it has already posted roughly 60,000 files. Most of them appear to be in Arabic.
There was no immediate way to verify the authenticity of the documents, but Wikileaks has a long track record of hosting large-scale leaks of government material. Many of the documents carried a green letterhead marked “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”. At least one appeared to be from the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
If genuine, the documents would offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the notoriously opaque kingdom. They might also shed light on Riyadh’s long-standing regional rivalry with Iran, its support for Syrian rebels and Egypt’s military-backed government, and its opposition to an emerging international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Among the most eye-catching items was a document addressed to the interior and justice ministers notifying them that a son of Osama bin Laden had obtained a certificate from the American Embassy in Riyadh “showing death of his father.”
The document, dated only by the day and month of the Islamic calendar, said the son hoped to get it certified by the ministry in order to present it to a court for inheritance purposes.
Wikileaks said the release coincided with the three-year anniversary of its founder, Julian Assange, seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.