Leading Arab daily back on sale in Saudi

Saudi Arabia’s ban on the distribution of influential pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat has been lifted, a senior member of the newspaper’s management said today.

“The ban on Al-Hayat was lifted on Friday,” the executive, who did not want to be named, told ArabianBusiness.com.

The government banned the London-based newspaper’s Saudi edition for four days from August 27.

“There was a misunderstanding with the Ministry of Information which has now been cleared up," he said when asked about the reason for the ban, without going into further detail.

However, another executive at Al-Hayat’s office in Riyadh told ArabianBusiness.com today that the real reason behind the ban was because the Saudi government had tried to pressure the paper into firing columnist Abdelaziz Al-Suwaid who has criticised the administration.

He said the government had been annoyed by Al-Suwaid’s recent columns criticising how the agricultural ministry handled the mysterious death of some 2,000 camels - which has so far blamed on poisoning rather than an infectious disease - and articles critical of the health ministry after the death of a young girl from a medical operation.

“I’ve had enough,” said the executive, stating that Al-Hayat has said Al-Suwaid is still a columnist with the paper. “Thank God this matter with the Saudis is now closed.”

An article published on August 26 about a Saudi man fighting for Iraqi militant group the Islamic State of Iraq was not a reason behind the ban, the source added, after media reports to the contrary.

Al-Hayat has several different editions. Its Saudi edition is believed to have the second-largest circulation of any newspaper in the kingdom at 200,000 copies per day.

Saudi papers are government-guided, with red lines usually drawn around sensitive topics and tightly censored by the kingdom’s authorities.

Al-Hayat has been banned in the kingdom on numerous occasions before. In October 2002, Saudi censors banned a single edition of the paper for printing an open letter from 67 American intellectuals defending the US campaign against terrorism and calling on Saudi intellectuals to denounce extremism.