Journalists have established the authenticity of the first tranche of the top secret Saudi documents published by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website said, adding that “it is just the beginning” of more revelations.
“We are seeing how the oil money is being used to increase the influence of Saudi Arabia … ally of the US and the UK. And since this spring, it has been waging war in neighboring Yemen,” a spokesperson for the WikiLeaks organization, Kristinn Hrafnsson, told RT.
On Friday, the website released the first tranche of nearly 70,000 secret government files, providing an insight into the kingdom’s interior and foreign policies.
Hrafnsson said this is “only one-tenth of documents we have, which will be released in the coming weeks.”
WikiLeaks said it plans to publish about half a million documents, which include communiques from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, as well as “top secret” reports from the kingdom’s intelligence agency and interior ministry.
“Let me remind you that this is just a beginning,” he said, adding that the documents are in Arabic, therefore “it will take longer for media to work on the material and develop stories.
“It’s interesting that they suggest that they are fabricated documents … without mentioning a single one. Of course journalists have already established the authenticity of many of the documents they have been working on.”
On Saturday, WikiLeaks published a report alleging Saudi Arabia’s “extensive efforts to monitor and manipulate Arab media.”
The Arab monarchy takes a systematic approach to maintaining the country’s positive image on the international stage, the site said, adding that Riyadh controls it by monitoring media and “buying loyalties from Australia to Canada and everywhere in between.”
