WikiLeaks to Release 500,000 Documents on Saudi Arabia

On Friday, June 29, the WikiLeaks website announced that starting today, it intends to publish over 500,000 diplomatic documents related to Saudi Arabia on the internet. The announcement states that these documents include confidential communications from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs with various embassies around the world, as well as 'top-secret' reports from Saudi government entities, including the Ministry of Interior and its intelligence organizations. On the first day of its initiative, WikiLeaks released over 61,000 documents, most of which are in Arabic. However, no official or media organization has yet confirmed the authenticity of these documents. In previous years, WikiLeaks has released a significant number of classified U.S. documents, some of which pertained to Saudi Arabia. One of these documents indicated that the former King of Saudi Arabia requested the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities. The Associated Press reports that among the newly released documents is one dated 2012, which shows Saudi Arabia's skepticism towards the nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers. This document is a message from the Saudi embassy in Tehran to the Saudi Foreign Ministry in Riyadh, stating that a Turkish intermediary conveyed American messages to Iran that seemed to be 'flirting.' The release of these documents coincides with the third anniversary of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, seeking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Mr. Assange has sought asylum from the Ecuadorian government to prevent Britain from extraditing him to Sweden for trial over sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied. In this context, the Swedish prosecutor's office accepted to interrogate Julian Assange in London.