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Jeddah Light Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia.
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Saudi Arabia on Saturday urged its citizens not to distribute
"documents that might be faked" in an apparent response to WikiLeaks'
publication on Friday of more than 60,000 documents it says are secret Saudi
diplomatic communications.
The statement, made by
the Foreign Ministry on its Twitter account, did not directly deny the
documents' authenticity.
The released documents,
which WikiLeaks said were embassy communications, emails between diplomats and
reports from other state bodies, include discussions of Saudi Arabia's position
regarding regional issues and efforts to influence media.
Reuters was not able to
independently verify the authenticity of the released documents.
The world's top oil
exporter, an absolute monarchy, is highly sensitive to public criticism and has
imprisoned activists for publishing attacks on the ruling Al Saud dynasty and
senior clerics. It maintains tight control over local media.
Since the 2011 Arab
uprisings, the Saudi authorities have grown increasingly intolerant of dissent,
apparently fearful that the instability sweeping neighbouring countries will in
turn hit the conservative Islamic kingdom.
Saturday's statement is
the only official government response since the release, which WikiLeaks says
is the first batch of more than half a million Saudi documents it has obtained
and plans to publish.
WikiLeaks did not say
where it obtained the documents, but it referred in a press release to Riyadh's
statement in May that it had suffered a breach of its computer networks, an
attack later claimed by a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army.
Saudi state and private
media on Saturday ignored the release.
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