New Egyptian Vice President Ran Secret US Torture Program In Egypt

By Yashwanth Manjunath

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.

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 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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