Saudi Arabia has indefinitely banned the distribution of a leading Arab newspaper, days after the paper disclosed that a Saudi extremist had played a key role in a violent Iraqi Al Qaeda front group. One of the kingdom's most influential journalists immediately criticized the ban, calling it a sharp retreat from recent growing press freedoms.
It was unclear if the Iraqi article was the main impetus for the ban, or merely the culmination of several weeks of disputes, mostly on other issues, between the Al Hayat newspaper and the kingdom's information minister. Saudi officials are sensitive to criticism that extremists from the kingdom are making their way to Iraq to fight against the Shiite-led government there, although in recent months, top Saudi officials have acknowledged the problem.
Saudi officials also bristle at Western criticism that they tolerate clerics in Saudi's strict Wahhabi strain of Sunni Islam who promote extremism. The Al Hayat article laid out ties between the extremist in Iraq and some Saudi clerics.
However, a journalist close to the newspaper in Riyadh said the Iraqi article, which appeared in Monday's editions, was just one in a series of disputes with the government. In recent months, Al Hayat's Saudi office had received several warnings from the country's Information Minister, Iyad Madani, about writings by its columnists, especially one often critical of government inefficiency, said the journalist. |