BEIRUT: Rights groups have accused the Saudi Arabian government of "infiltrating" and seeking to control Wikipedia, after the Wikimedia Foundation banned 16 users for engaging in "conflict of interest editing" in the Middle East and North Africa.
The ban late last year came after an almost year-long investigation that concluded that the users had close connections to "external parties", and that these links were a source of "serious concern for the safety" of users, said the Wikimedia Foundation.
