With his tyrannical administration in mid-collapse, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak radically reorganized his government today. The biggest change was the appointment of Omar Suleiman to the post of Vice President. Egypt has not had a Vice President since Mubarak himself occupied the post back in 1981. So who is Omar Suleiman?
Here are the five facts about Suleiman that Reuters bothered to report:
He has been the director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services (EGIS) since 1993, a role in which he has played a prominent public role in diplomacy, including in Egypt's relations with Israel and with key aid donor the United States.
* He was born on July 2, 1936 in Qena, in southern Egypt. He later enrolled in Egypt's premier Military Academy in 1954, after which he received additional military training in the then Soviet Union at Moscow's Frunze Military Academy.
* He also studied political science at Cairo University and Ain Shams University. In 1992 he headed the General Operations Authority in the Armed Forces and then became the director of the military intelligence unit before taking over EGIS.
* Suleiman took part in the war in Yemen in 1962 and the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel.
* As Egypt's intelligence chief, Suleiman was in charge of the country's most important political security files, and was the mastermind behind the fragmentation of Islamist groups who led the uprising against the state in the 1990s.
Curiously left out of these "five facts" is that Suleiman was responsible for running the United States' secret rendition program in Egypt. Rendition of course is the practice in which the United States government transferred suspected terrorists to foreign countries to escape the limitations of American anti-torture laws.
Here is the relevant excerpt on Suleiman's role in rendition from Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side:
In 1995, Scheuer said, America proposed the rendition program to Egypt. In Cairo that summer, Edward S. Walker Jr., the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, learned about the plan from the CIA's Cairo station chief. It was considered so secret, the two met in a special secure area of a fortresslike embassy, a room encased by electronically impenetrable walls and regularly swept for eavesdropping equipment. Given Egypt's difficulties halting terrorism on its own, using more conventional police methods, Walker endorsed the plan.
Soon after, the United States offered Egypt its rich resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally -- immediately. "What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian," Scheuer said. "It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated." Technically, U.S. law required the CIA to seek "assurances" from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't be tortured. But even during the Clinton Administration, this obligation appears to have been little more than a sham. Scheuer insisted that the assurances were obtained, but he acknowledged that he was "not sure" if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed. In a congressional hearing, he acknowledged candidly that even if the assurances not to torture were written in indelible ink, coming from Arab police states, "they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit."
Each rendition was authorized at the very top levels of both governments. Tenet or the head of the CTC was required to sign off on each case. The National Security Adviser, too, was apprised of many of the renditions. The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top Agency officials. Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as "very bright, very realistic," adding that he was cognizant 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."
A series of spectacular operations followed almost immediately from this secret pact...
The fact that Suleiman was responsible for helping our government torture suspected terrorists, before his sudden appointment to Vice President, is most suspicious indeed. If Mubarak is overthrown, Suleiman is in a prime position to replace him as President of Egypt. If that happens, look for Suleiman to be nothing more than a US/Western puppet.
How long do you guys figure before the mainstream media actually reports any of this information about Suleiman? Let alone investigates the circumstances behind his appointment...
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