Saudileaks 24: Cables Disclose Riyadh's Efforts to Shut Media Up over Bahrain

TEHRAN (FNA) - A Saudi foreign ministry cable gained in the May cyberattack by the Yemen Cyber Army disclosed Riyadh's deep concerns about media coverage of Bahraini uprising, fearing that the world media might soon focus on the Saudi regime's suppressive policies.

Date: 24 June 2015 - 21:29

News ID: ۱۵۳۵۰

The Saudi Foreign Ministry was hacked by the Yemen Cyber Army in May, and a copy of its information was sent to FNA and another one to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
One of the documents released by the YCA shows that the Riyadh government sees Bahrain as an endangered base for Saudi Arabia, where a news coverage of the popular uprising by the world media could lead to the overthrow of its allied regime and further spread to Saudi Arabia.
The document shows former Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Abdulaziz Khojah informed the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 2012 that Bahrain has become a state where Saudi Arabia is targeted.
The cable revealed that Saudi Arabia has kept close tabs on international media coverage on Bahrain, monitoring media outlets which covered the protests of the Bahraini people.
Khojah also stated that his ministry noticed that a number of foreign media outlets as well as study and research centers have made Bahrain a place to criticize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its authorities and policy towards the events taking place in the region, while slamming the Bahraini leadership on a routine basis.
The document, labeled "secret" and "urgent", discoles that Riyadh gives a harsh response to any kind of criticism toward the royal family.
The former minister has also indicated in the document that Reuters' correspondent Andrew Hammond, "who is famous for his enmity towards our wise leadership", had to be expelled from Saudi Arabia due to his news reports.
Late in May, the Yemen Cyber Army released a portion of the information and documents that it had gained in its recent cyber attack on Saudi Arabia's Foreign, Interior and Defense Ministries.
The Yemen Cyber Army announced that it has hacked the website, servers and archives of Saudi Arabia's Foreign, Interior and Defense ministries and would release thousands of these top secret documents.
The group claimed that it "has gained access to the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) network and have full control over more than 3000 computers and servers, and thousands of users. We also have access to the emails, personal and secret information of hundreds of thousands of their staff and diplomats in different missions around the world".
The hackers' statement, which said the cyber army has also attacked the Saudi Interior and Defense ministries and vowed to release their details later, was carried by several globally known hackers websites.
Following the hack in May, the Yemen Cyber Army sent a copy of its information to FNA and another one to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
"WikiLeaks released over 60,000 documents on Friday and vowed to release the rest in coming weeks, but we plan to release the documents in separate news data-x-items since many of them contain the names of foreign nationals who have demanded visit to Saudi Arabia, for example for Hajj pilgrimage, and their names have been mentioned among the Saudi agents. Thus releasing the list of names and documents might hurt innocent individuals who have done nothing, but applied for visa at a Saudi embassy for doing Hajj pilgrimage," FNA English Editor-in-Chief Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm said.
"The number of the documents is way beyond the 500,000 that has been announced by WikiLeaks, but they need to be checked first to make sure that they do not contain misleading information and are not harmful to innocent people," he added.