Maybe the wheels of justice just took 5 years to track them down?

It's a red herring from the Saudis to point at the fact that many Wikipedia entries are already heavily modified and controlled by interest groups like their own. Why they would announce it this way is another question.

nope. justice against political prisoners in such regimes is very expeditive. there's no actual justice, no case building. they just arrest dissidents based on snitches reports and torture them till they sign confessions

Also not clear : the relationship between the infiltrated saudi admins and the arrest of the editors. it's not like the editors were anonymous and the infiltrated admins outed them, their profile and edit histories are right there on wikipedia for saudi gestapo to view.

there must be something else going on