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By MATTHEW COLE and SARAH O. WALI http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/egypt-crisis-omar-suleiman-cia-rendition/story?id=12812445 New Egyptian VP Ran Mubarak's Security Team, Oversaw Torture | |
Feb. 1, 2011
The intelligence chief tapped by Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak as his vice president and potential
successor aided the
intelligence experts told ABC News, and oversaw the
torture of an Al Qaeda suspect whose information
helped justify the
In the midst of Egypt's protests, Omar Suleiman went
on television Monday to say that President Mubarak
had ordered him to launch reforms and begin talking
to opposition parties. But for the
and Egypt's Islamist opposition, 74-year-old
Suleiman, who has been the head of Egyptian
intelligence since 1993, represents a continuation of
the policies of the old regime.
"Mubarak and Suleiman are the same person," said
Emile Nakhleh, a former top
the CIA. "They are not two different people in terms of
ideology and reform."
Ron Suskind, author of the book The One Percent
Doctrine, called Suleiman the "hit man" for the
Mubarak regime. He told ABC News that when the CIA
asked Suleiman for a DNA sample from a relative of Al
Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Suleiman offered the
man's whole arm instead.
"He's a charitable man, friendly," said Suskind. "He
tortures only people that he doesn't know."
Suskind said Suleiman "was our point man in
for many years. Everything went through Omar. We
never had to talk to anyone else. When we wanted
someone to be tortured, we'd send him to
have them tortured. We wanted to get intelligence and
we didn't need it to be stuff that could be
doublechecked."
"As chief of the Mukhabarat, or General Intelligence
Directorate," said John Sifton, who authored the 2007
Human Rights Watch report on torture conducted by
oversaw joint intelligence operations with the CIA and
other Arab countries "which featured illegal
renditions and tortures of dozens of detainees."
As revealed in
Suleiman has cooperated closely with the
with
party in the Palestinian territories. The Mubarak
regime views Hamas, which has its roots in
own Islamist opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, as
a threat.
"Our intelligence collaboration with Omar Soliman,"
says a 2006
alternate spelling of his name, "is now probably the
most successful element of the [U.S.-Egypt]
relationship." During a 2009 meeting with
military officials, Suleiman said his "overarching
regional goal was combating radicalism, especially in
WikiLeaks cable.
Other U.S. cables describe paranoia within the
Mubarak regime, call it a dictatorship, say "torture
and police brutality are widespread" -- and that six
years ago, Suleiman was already seen as likely to
become vice president.
False Confessions Through Torture
According to British journalist Stephen Grey, author
of "Ghost Plane," a book about the CIA's rendition
program, Suleiman agreed in 1995 to let the
secretly transfer suspects to
Under "extraordinary rendition," terror suspects can
be taken to third countries and interrogated without
oversight by the
Though some suspects of other nationalities were
sent to
most suspects rendered were Egyptian. Egyptians who
were interrogated under the program include Abu
Omar, a cleric kidnapped by the CIA in Milan in 2003,
and a brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The CIA thought it had killed Zawahiri in a bombing
strike in 2002 and believed it had possession of his
head. In order to get confirmation the agency needed
genetic material from Zawahiri's brother, then a
prisoner in Eypt.
According to Suskind, "Suleiman said, 'It's no
problem. We'll just cut the brother's arm off and send
it to you.' " Suskind said a CIA agent told Suleiman
that a vial of blood would suffice.
Prior to the
commander Ibn al Sheikh al-Libi was transferred to
report, al-Libi was beaten and locked in a cage as
Egyptian officials attempted to get him to confirm a
connection between Al Qaeda and Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein. Al Libi told his interrogators,
according to the report, that Hussein was supplying
Al Qaeda with chemical weapons. He later recanted.
Sifton notes that the intelligence gained by the
Mukhabarat via torture was often specious. Said
Sifton, "On numerous occasions their intelligence was
riddled with utter falsehoods and fabrications."
Sifton said that most of the torture of Egyptian
citizens was conducted by the SSI and the local
police, and that most of the protestors in the street
who are objecting to Suleiman as a leader see him "as
a regime hack, and close to the Israelis to boot."
"But insofar as his role in rendition to torture offers a
hint of how he does business," said Sifton, "Egyptians
are right to be wary of him. … He's a creature of the
Mubarak regime, an entity that maintained its power
over three decades through terror and torture."
Nakhleh said many officials in
stunned at Mubarak's choice of Suleiman, and called
it a "dead-end appointment. . . . He is not the right
person to conduct negotiations with the opposition."
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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