The Saudi Cables

The Saudi Cables are documents from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs — cables from Saudi embassies, internal reports, emails and spreadsheets — together with some reports from other state bodies, including the Ministry of Interior and the General Intelligence service. I began publishing them on 19 June 2015, describing a cache of more than half a million documents to be released in tranches. I put the first tranche at around 70,000 documents; contemporary news reports counted more than 60,000. Our database now lists 122,619 published documents.

Much of the material consists of scanned Arabic-language documents, which I converted into searchable text. Reporting based on the cables included articles by our partners on Saudi relations with Egypt, and a September 2015 report — based on cables translated by The Australian newspaper and the Geneva-based organisation UN Watch — that Britain and Saudi Arabia had discussed exchanging support ahead of the 2013 elections to the UN Human Rights Council. The UK Foreign Office said it never revealed its voting intentions.

I did not say how we obtained the documents. Our press release referred to the Saudi foreign ministry's acknowledgement in May 2015 of a breach of its computer networks, an attack claimed by a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army, which we said had already released sample documents online. The publication came during the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen that began in March 2015.

The Saudi government did not confirm the documents' authenticity. The foreign ministry urged citizens not to share documents 'that might be faked', and its spokesman, Osama Nugali (also transliterated Naqli), said many had been 'fabricated in a very obvious manner' and that those involved would be prosecuted (Al Jazeera; The Guardian). Partners named on our release page are Al Akhbar (Lebanon), Mada Masr (Egypt), The Saturday Paper (Australia) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), alongside Reporters Without Borders.