From: The Intercept
Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's King
Abdullah in 2010. Photo credit: Ron Edmonds/AP
The National Security Agency last year
significantly expanded its cooperative relationship with the Saudi
Ministry of Interior, one of the world’s most repressive and abusive
government agencies. An April 2013 top secret memo provided
by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden details the agency’s plans “to
provide direct analytic and technical support” to the Saudis on
“internal security” matters.
The Saudi Ministry of Interior—referred to in the document as MOI—
has been condemned for years as one of the most brutal human rights
violators in the world. In 2013, the U.S. State Department reported
that “Ministry of Interior officials sometimes subjected prisoners and
detainees to torture and other physical abuse,” specifically mentioning a
2011 episode in which MOI agents allegedly “poured an antiseptic
cleaning liquid down [the] throat” of one human rights activist. The
report also notes the MOI’s use of invasive surveillance targeted at
political and religious dissidents.
But as the State Department publicly catalogued those very abuses,
the NSA worked to provide increased surveillance assistance to the
ministry that perpetrated them. The move is part of the Obama
Administration’s increasingly close ties with the Saudi regime; beyond
the new cooperation with the MOI, the memo describes “a period of rejuvenation” for the NSA’s relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Defense. MORE
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