Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman and Shimon Peres of Israel discuss relevant matters. An article published by Al Jazeera says that Suleiman is the United States Central Intelligence Agency's asset in Cairo.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Suleiman, a friend to the US and reported torturer, has long been
touted as a presidential successor
Lisa Hajjar
Last Modified: 07 Feb 2011 14:10 GMT
Suleiman met with Israeli president Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv, November 2010
On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was anointed vice president by tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing
Suleiman, part of a shake-up of the cabinet in an attempt to appease
the masses of protesters and retain his own grip on the presidency,
Mubarak has once again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness.
Suleiman has long been favoured by the US government for his ardent
anti-Islamism, his willingness to talk and act tough on Iran - and he
has long been the CIA’s main man in Cairo.
Mubarak knew that Suleiman would command an instant lobby of
supporters at Langley and among 'Iran nexters' in Washington - not to
mention among other authoritarian mukhabarat-dependent regimes in the region. Suleiman is a favourite of Israel too; he held the Israel
dossier and directed Egypt’s efforts to crush Hamas by demolishing the
tunnels that have functioned as a smuggling conduit for both weapons
and foodstuffs into Gaza.
According to a WikiLeak(ed) US diplomatic cable, titled 'Presidential
Succession in Egypt', dated May 14, 2007:
"Egyptian intelligence chief and Mubarak consigliere, in past years
Soliman was often cited as likely to be named to the long-vacant
vice-presidential post. In the past two years, Soliman has stepped out
of the shadows, and allowed himself to be photographed, and his
meetings with foreign leaders reported. Many of our contacts believe
that Soliman, because of his military background, would at least have
to figure in any succession scenario."
From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General
Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001,
when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry;
he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests.
In 2009, he was touted by the London Telegraph and Foreign Policy as
the most powerful spook in the region, topping even the head of
Mossad.
In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton
administration in devising and implementing its rendition program;
back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and
transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane
Mayer describes how the rendition program began:
"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both
governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the
Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated
directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt
Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p.113).
"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt
that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's
reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."
Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on
terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective
of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a
suspect to trial - but rather for interrogation to seek actionable
intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people
in CIA black sites - and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy
to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of
choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one
person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born
Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
Suleiman the torturer
In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security
forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents,
he was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to
Egypt he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a
suppository was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper - and
'wrapped up like a spring roll'.
In Egypt, as Habib recounts in his memoir, My Story: The Tale of a
Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks,
immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were
broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his
interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged,
revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.
Frustrated that Habib was not providing useful information or
confessing to involvement in terrorism, Suleiman ordered a guard to
murder a shackled prisoner in front of Habib, which he did with a
vicious karate kick. In April 2002, after five months in Egypt, Habib
was rendered to American custody at Bagram prison in Afghanistan - and then transported to Guantanamo. On January 11, 2005, the day before he was scheduled to be charged, Dana Priest of the Washington Post published an exposé about Habib’s torture. The US government immediately announced that he would not be charged and would be repatriated to Australia.
A far more infamous torture case, in which Suleiman also is directly
implicated, is that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Unlike Habib, who was
innocent of any ties to terror or militancy, al-Libi was allegedly a
trainer at al-Khaldan camp in Afghanistan. He was captured by the
Pakistanis while fleeing across the border in November 2001. He was
sent to Bagram, and questioned by the FBI. But the CIA wanted to take
over, which they did, and he was transported to a black site on the
USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, then extraordinarily rendered to Egypt. Under torture there, al-Libi "confessed" knowledge about an
al-Qaeda–Saddam connection, claiming that two al-Qaeda operatives had received training in Iraq for use in chemical and biological weapons.
In early 2003, this was exactly the kind of information that the Bush
administration was seeking to justify attacking Iraq and to persuade
reluctant allies to go along. Indeed, al-Libi’s "confession" was one
the central pieces of "evidence" presented at the United Nations by
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the case for war.
As it turns out, that confession was a lie tortured out of him by
Egyptians. Here is how former CIA chief George Tenet describes the
whole al-Libi situation in his 2007 memoir, At The Center Of The
Storm:
"We believed that al-Libi was withholding critical threat information
at the time, so we transferred him to a third country for further
debriefing. Allegations were made that we did so knowing that he would be tortured, but this is false. The country in question [Egypt]
understood and agreed that they would hold al-Libi for a limited
period. In the course of questioning while he was in US custody in
Afghanistan, al-Libi made initial references to possible al-Qa'ida
training in Iraq. He offered up information that a militant known as
Abu Abdullah had told him that at least three times between 1997 and
2000, the now-deceased al-Qa'ida leader Mohammad Atef had sent Abu Abdullah to Iraq to seek training in poisons and mustard gas.
"Another senior al-Qa'ida detainee told us that Mohammad Atef was
interested in expanding al-Qa'ida's ties to Iraq, which, in our eyes,
added credibility to the reporting. Then, shortly after the Iraq war
got under way, al-Libi recanted his story. Now, suddenly, he was
saying that there was no such cooperative training. Inside the CIA,
there was sharp division on his recantation. It led us to recall his
reporting, and here is where the mystery begins.
"Al-Libi's story will no doubt be that he decided to fabricate in
order to get better treatment and avoid harsh punishment. He clearly
lied. We just don't know when. Did he lie when he first said that
al-Qa'ida members received training in Iraq - or did he lie when he
said they did not? In my mind, either case might still be true.
Perhaps, early on, he was under pressure, assumed his interrogators
already knew the story, and sang away. After time passed and it became clear that he would not be harmed, he might have changed his story to cloud the minds of his captors. Al-Qa'ida operatives are trained to do just that. A recantation would restore his stature as someone who had successfully confounded the enemy. The fact is, we don't know which story is true, and since we don't know, we can assume nothing. (pp. 353-354)"
Al-Libi was eventually sent off, quietly, to Libya - though he
reportedly made a few other stops along the way - where he was
imprisoned. The use of al-Libi’s statement in the build-up to the Iraq
war made him a huge American liability once it became clear that the
purported al-Qaeda–Saddam connection was a tortured lie. His
whereabouts were, in fact, a secret for years, until April 2009 when
Human Rights Watch researchers investigating the treatment of Libyan
prisoners encountered him in the courtyard of a prison. Two weeks
later, on May 10, al-Libi was dead, and the Gaddafi regime claimed it
was a suicide.
According to Evan Kohlmann, who enjoys favoured status among US
officials as an 'al-Qaeda expert', citing a classified source:
'Al-Libi’s death coincided with the first visit by Egypt’s spymaster
Omar Suleiman to Tripoli.'
Kohlmann surmises and opines that, after al-Libi recounted his story
about about an al-Qaeda–Saddam-WMD connection, "The Egyptians were embarassed by this admission - and the Bush government found itself in hot water internationally. Then, in May 2009, Omar Suleiman saw an opportunity to get even with al-Libi and travelled to Tripoli. By the time Omar Suleiman’s plane left Tripoli, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi had
committed 'suicide'."
As people in Egypt and around the world speculate about the fate of
the Mubarak regime, one thing should be very clear: Omar Suleiman is
not the man to bring democracy to the country. His hands are too
dirty, and any 'stability' he might be imagined to bring to the
country and the region comes at way too high a price. Hopefully, the
Egyptians who are thronging the streets and demanding a new era of
freedom will make his removal from power part of their demands, too.
Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California - Santa
Barbara and is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.
This article first appeared on Jadaliyya.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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