Saudi: Leaks do not contradict declared policies

The Saudi foreign ministry on Sunday described content of Wikileaks’ publications of more than 60,000 documents as showing no contradiction to its declared policies and warned against circulation of these documents as many were “fabricated,” Al Arabiya News Channel reported.

Head of Information Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Ousama Al Naqli confirmed to Al Arabiya News Channel in an interview that the organized electronic attack that targeted the ministry was not able to hack most classified documents which are in millions.

He also said “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses a system with very high standards. It also uses one of the best protection systems in the world.”

Ambassador Naqli said the current information is related to an earlier attack, and refers to the well-known policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Naqli stressed that investigations are still underway in coordination with the state competent authorities.

“We have reached seventy percent [in investigation]… in the coming weeks things will become clearer to us and we will announce these results,” he said.

He also spoke an ongoing electronic warfare that is “not hidden.”

“We are experiencing an electronic warfare, which is not hidden as it has existed for a very long time,” he said, adding “this electronic warfare is against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United States, and several countries in the world, so we are prepared for it.”

He said these “hacking attempts are ongoing by foreign parties, and we have filed these attempts.”

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.

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.