They've done a couple of other strange things. After the Grand Mosque in Mecca was taken over in 1979 by terrorists, their investigation revealed that the terrorists used private radios and police scanners. This shaped their communication laws banning all public ownership of devices like that.
Enter the computer age. You could ship in computers and buy them in Saudi to some degree or another, but the one thing you could buy or bring in was a scanner or printer/scanner combination. Their reason was it was a scanner, making no distinction between a police radio scanner and a computer scanner.
The best one was the Saudis solution to their stray dog problem. Some Einstein in their government decided that the cause of the strays was Westerners buying dog food. We still never figured out how they came to that conclusion. Saudi law was changed to ban the importation of dog food. Somebody with some common sense finally talked them into changing the law as it made them look ridiculous. It still put dog owners in a bind for the few weeks it was in effect.
Correction to last, please read "the one thing you could buy or bring in was a scanner" as "the one thing you couldn't buy or bring in was a scanner" Sorry.