Omar Suleiman, Powerful Egypt Spy Chief, Dies at 76
By ROD NORDLAND
Published: July 19, 2012
CAIRO — Omar Suleiman, the once-powerful head of Egypt’s intelligence service
who represented the old government’s last attempt to hold on to power, died on
Thursday at an American hospital, according to the state-owned Middle East News
Agency. He was 76.
There had been no public reports that Mr. Suleiman was
ailing or that he had gone to the United States for medical care, so the news
of his death came as a surprise. Reuters said he died suddenly while undergoing
a medical examination. Al Ahram, the state-owned newspaper in Egypt, said he
died at a hospital in Cleveland. No cause was given.
That he died in the United States was, to his Egyptian
critics, emblematic of his close ties with the C.I.A., which he had helped as
it established the practice of extraordinary rendition: sending terrorism
suspects to foreign countries to be interrogated and, its critics say, tortured.
When the C.I.A. asked Mr. Suleiman if he could provide a DNA
sample from a brother of the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, Mr. Suleiman offered to send the
agency the brother’s entire arm, according to Ron Suskind, who has written
extensively about antiterrorism efforts.
Mr. Suleiman’s supporters, however, saw him as a pillar of
the old order who might have served as a buffer between military rule on the
one hand and dominance by Islamist groups on the other.
In 18 years as the head of the General Intelligence Service,
better known as the Mukhabarat, Mr. Suleiman became, in the view of many, the
most powerful spymaster in the Middle East. He was often referred to as
President Hosni Mubarak’s “black box.” His
insistence that the Egyptian leader use an armored car during a visit to
Ethiopia in 1995 is said to have saved Mr. Mubarak from an assassin’s bullet.
As Mr. Mubarak was buffeted by months of street protests and
calls for his resignation, he turned to Mr. Suleiman to lead negotiations with
his critics. He later charged him with a last-ditch effort to reorganize the
government, appointing him to the long-vacant post of vice president. The move
was widely ridiculed by revolutionaries, and 13 days later, on Feb. 11, 2011,
it was Mr. Suleiman who announced that Mr. Mubarak was standing down and
handing over interim power to the military. Another figure took over the
Mukhabarat.
Mr. Suleiman was the first head of the intelligence service
whose identity became publicly known. He played a crucial role in Egyptian
diplomatic efforts to forge a reconciliation between Palestinians from Hamas and from
Fatah, although releases of diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks showed that he
had worked with the Israelis to try to deny Hamas its electoral victory in
Gaza. Mr. Suleiman viewed the organization as an extension of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Egyptian party he had helped ban from participating in
national politics until its victory in this year’s presidential election.
“I think a lot of secrets will die with him,” said Nabil
Fahmy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States. “He had a unique
ability of being in a very sensitive, often controversial position as head of
intelligence but at the same time preserving the respect of people toward him.
He was a professional.”
Mr. Suskind, who wrote about American antiterrorism efforts
in his 2006 book “The One Percent Doctrine,” had a more trenchant view.
“Suleiman was our go-to guy for ugly extralegal actions — like torture and
renditions — that we wanted done, but without U.S. fingerprints on them,” Mr. Suskind
said in a telephone interview. “His legacy represents the ongoing costs of
these ‘dark side’ engagements for the U.S. — a loss of our honest broker’s
credibility at a time it could be so valuable in shaping and guiding the
democratic springtime in the region.”
Mr. Suleiman’s deep involvement in the C.I.A.’s program of
extraordinary rendition implicated him in allegations of torture. The first
known case of rendition, that of Talaat Fouad Qassem, was to Egypt in 1995,
according to Omar Ashour, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Doha Center. Mr.
Suleiman’s intelligence agency was also accused of involvement in the torture
of dissidents.
His public speeches during the Tahrir Square revolution,
denouncing protesters as agents of foreign governments and claiming that Egypt
was not ready for democracy, eroded his public support. At the same time, many
moderate Egyptians looked to Mr. Suleiman, and later to Mr. Mubarak’s last
prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, as an alternative to Islamist leadership.
“For pro-revolution and pro-change Egyptians, he was the
brains behind Mubarak’s regime survival and a brutal torturer-murderer,” Mr.
Ashour said. “For pro-Mubarak, he is a source of stability in the country and a
bulwark against Islamist advance.”
Mr. Suleiman’s death came at a symbolic moment. Mr. Mubarak
was returned to prison this week after being held in the
relative comfort of a military hospital, and Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new president and a former
leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, met on Thursday with Khaled Meshal, the top
political leader of Hamas.
Mr. Suleiman was born on July 2, 1936, in Qena, a city in
Upper Egypt. He graduated from Egypt’s military academy and, like Mr. Mubarak,
received training in the Soviet Union. He studied political science at Cairo
University and at Ain Shams University in Cairo.
As a former lieutenant general in the Egyptian military, he
would be entitled to burial with military honors. But some critics in Cairo
were already arguing against that. It would put Egypt’s new president in an
awkward position, since he would be expected to attend.
“He is entitled to have a military funeral by law, and I
respect that, but I don’t think that he deserves it,” said Hisham Kassem, a
publisher and a political analyst. “This is a man who basically spent 18 years
making sure Egypt does not move to the road of democracy.”
Kareem Fahim and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 20,
2012, on page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: Omar Suleiman,
Powerful Egypt Spy Chief, Dies at 76.
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