The king is dead. Long live the king.
The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton today signalled how far the US has swung its support behind vice-president Omar Suleiman and the transition process he is leading in Egypt.[...]
In her most striking remarks, the US secretary of state said: "There are forces at work in any society, particularly one that is facing these kind of challenges, that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own agenda, which is why I think it's important to follow the transition process announced by the Egyptian government, actually headed by vice-president Omar Suleiman."
Biden also urged in the call Tuesday with Omar Suleiman that the transition produce immediate and irreversible progress responding to what the Egyptian people want. And Biden expressed the belief that "meaningful negotiations" with the government can meet the demands of the opposition in Egypt.That runs counter to demands of many protesters in Egypt who say they cannot negotiate with the government while President Hosni Mubarak remains in power. The U.S. has never called for Mubarak's resignation and now appears to be increasingly endorsing negotiations headed by Suleiman, a Mubarak ally, which some protesters say fall far short of what is needed.
Perhaps because they know Suleiman (Soliman), Egypt's strongman behind Mubarak's regime, is tied to the US.
A little introduction to Omar Suleiman:
An intelligence official who trained at the U.S. Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, Suleiman became head of the [Egyptian] spy agency in 1993 which brought him into close contact with the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently he took up a more public role as chief Egyptian interlocuter with Israel to discuss the peace process with Hamas and Fatah, the rival Palestinian factions.[...]
On 15 June 2005, a memo (05CAIRO4534) written for Timothy Pounds, the director for Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and North Africa at U.S. National Security Council, noted: “(A)ll agreed that the most likely candidate to be appointed to the post (of vice-president) was General Omar Soliman, Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS).” (State department officials use a different spelling of Suleiman’s name)
Almost a year later, another diplomatic memo (06CAIRO2933) written on 14 May 2006 made it clear that the U.S. government was working closely with Suleiman on key regional matters such as figuring out how best to marginalize Hamas in Palestine.
[...]
One of the reasons that Washington has been keen to support Soliman is his opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. A blog posting on Al Jazeera’s website by Clayton Swisher, former director of programs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, sums up a 2005 meeting with Suleiman: “(H)is blunt words made me drop my biscuit. Suffice it to say he does not have a high opinion of Islam in politics, and is not shy about telling Western audiences the lengths he will go to allow his security services to keep the Muslim Brotherhood and their offshoots at bay.”
One of the new names being mentioned as a possible alternative to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt Omar Suleiman is actually not so new to anyone who has followed the American policy of renditions for terror suspects.[...]
Cairo Asharq AlAwsat General Omar Suleiman Egypts Intelligence Chief for nearly two decades is one of the most powerful intelligence directors in the world according to Western reports and has also been described as the fixer.
Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak. While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book “The Dark Side,” since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions—the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances.
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.[...]
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
Al-Libi was eventually sent off, quietly, to Libya - though he reportedly made a few other stops along the way - where he was imprisoned. [...] 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.'
Montasser al-Zayat, an Egyptian attorney who represented U.S. prisoners, told [Author Stephen] Grey:“We have heard of full airplanes arriving at night, but these prisoners are kept very isolated. It’s really difficult to learn more….When a prisoner is sent back to Egypt, he basically disappears for up to three months. That’s when he is interrogated and tortured, and when he is allowed no visitors. Only after that when his wounds are healing, does he see the prosecutor and have visitors.” Some, he explained, never reached that stage and simply remained disappeared.”
[...]
Since 1993, the ruler of this shadowy world of Egyptian intelligence–”a close friend of the West and the spy agency that had the closest links with America and the CIA”–had been none other than Omar Suleiman.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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