By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor
The Saudi Foreign Ministry was hacked by the Yemen Cyber Army in May, and a copy of its information was sent to FNA and another one to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
The documents released by the YCA discloses that former Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal concurs with the intelligence agency’s recommendation to host the head of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government Massoud Barzani in Riyadh because of his opposition to the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki.
Another document released by the YCA shows that Riyadh had bribed the former Iraqi parliament speaker with a huge sum of money to buy his cooperation with ISIL terrorist group when they initiated their attack on Iraq last Summer. The document contains a letter written by Director General of the Saudi Interior Ministry Bandar bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to Osama al-Nujaifi saying that Riyadh had deposited $575mln to a Turkish bank 13 days after Mosul’s fall on June 10, 2014.
“We hope that you will not withdraw money from the account before announcing your preparedness to implement what has been agreed between us so that the percentages of money for any of certain figures specified in our agreement will be divided,” the letter added.
At the time when Mosul fell in the hands of the ISIL, Nujaifi, who is the brother of Atheel al-Nujaifi, Nineveh’s governor, claimed that Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts in Mosul when the ISIL attacks began.
The former top legislator said that he was mobilizing popular committees to rid the city of ISIL and terror groups.
“We’ve introduced practical steps to try to bring back a new system in Nineveh, by mobilizing people in popular committees to try to win back Mosul,” he added in a promise that was never materialized.
Also, another document shows that Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry has tried to establish connections with leaders of Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq by offering bribe in order to undermine the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The cable recommends close coordination between the Kingdom’s foreign ministry and intelligence agency, and suggests inviting influential politicans and religious and cultural Iraqi figures to the Kingdom on a regular basis in order to strengthen relations and exchange views and information with them. The letter also askes for invitation of knowledgeable individuals who can change the minds and thinking of Iraqi Shitte Muslims to keep them away from the Shiite community and Iran.
Late in May, the Yemen Cyber Army released a portion of the information and documents that it had gained in its recent cyber attack on Saudi Arabia’s Foreign, Interior and Defense Ministries.
The Yemen Cyber Army announced that it has hacked the website, servers and archives of Saudi Arabia’s Foreign, Interior and Defense ministries and would release thousands of these top secret documents.
The group claimed that it “has gained access to the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) network and have full control over more than 3000 computers and servers, and thousands of users. We also have access to the emails, personal and secret information of hundreds of thousands of their staff and diplomats in different missions around the world”.
The hackers’ statement, which said the cyber army has also attacked the Saudi Interior and Defense ministries and vowed to release their details later, was carried by several globally known hackers websites.
Following the hack in May, the Yemen Cyber Army sent a copy of its information to FNA and another one to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
“WikiLeaks released over 60,000 documents on Friday and vowed to release the rest in coming weeks, but we plan to release the documents in separate news items since many of them contain the names of foreign nationals who have demanded visit to Saudi Arabia, for example for Hajj pilgrimage, and their names have been mentioned among the Saudi agents. Thus releasing the list of names and documents might hurt innocent individuals who have done nothing, but applied for visa at a Saudi embassy for doing Hajj pilgrimage,” FNA English Editor-in-Chief Seyed Mostafa Khoshcheshm said.
“The number of the documents is way beyond the 500,000 that has been announced by WikiLeaks, but they need to be checked first to make sure that they do not contain misleading information and are not harmful to innocent people,” he added.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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