Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

Un ritratto esauriente del personaggio oggi più influente in Egitto.
Quello che dovrebbe guidare il paese verso la democrazia.
-------------------------
Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo
Lisa Hajjar Last Modified: 07 Feb 2011 14:10 GMT
On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was anointed vice 
president by tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing Suleiman, 
part of a shake-up of the cabinet in an attempt to appease the masses of 
protesters and retain  his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has once 
again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness. Suleiman has long been 
favoured by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism, his 
willingness to talk and act tough on Iran - and he has long been the 
CIA’s main man in Cairo.
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.
According to a WikiLeak(ed) US diplomatic cable, titled 'Presidential 
Succession in Egypt', dated May 14, 2007:
     "Egyptian intelligence chief and Mubarak consigliere, in past years 
Soliman was often cited as likely to be named to the long-vacant 
vice-presidential post. In the past two years, Soliman has stepped out 
of the shadows, and allowed himself to be photographed, and his meetings 
with foreign leaders reported. Many of our contacts believe that 
Soliman, because of his military background, would at least have to 
figure in any succession scenario."
 From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General 
Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001, 
when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry; 
he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests. 
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. In The Dark Side, Jane 
Mayer describes how the rendition program began:
     "Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both 
governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the 
Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly 
with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker 
described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very 
realistic', adding that he was cognisant 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'. (p. 113).
     "Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from 
Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's 
reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. 
As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], 
who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if 
such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a 
bucket of warm spit'."
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.
Suleiman the torturer
In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security 
forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents, he 
was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then 
turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to Egypt 
he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a suppository 
was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper - and 'wrapped up like 
a spring roll'.
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. He was captured by the 
Pakistanis while fleeing across the border in November 2001. He was sent 
to Bagram, and questioned by the FBI. But the CIA wanted to take over, 
which they did, and he was transported to a black site on the USS Bataan 
in the Arabian Sea, then extraordinarily rendered to Egypt. Under 
torture there, al-Libi "confessed" knowledge about an al-Qaeda–Saddam 
connection, claiming that two al-Qaeda operatives had received training 
in Iraq for use in chemical and biological weapons. In early 2003, this 
was exactly the kind of information that the Bush administration was 
seeking to justify attacking Iraq and to persuade reluctant allies to go 
along. Indeed, al-Libi’s "confession" was one the central pieces of 
"evidence" presented at the United Nations by then-Secretary of State 
Colin Powell to make the case for war.
As it turns out, that confession was a lie tortured out of him by 
Egyptians. Here is how former CIA chief George Tenet describes the whole 
al-Libi situation in his 2007 memoir, At The Center Of The Storm:
     "We believed that al-Libi was withholding critical threat 
information at the time, so we transferred him to a third country for 
further debriefing. Allegations were made that we did so knowing that he 
would be tortured, but this is false. The country in question [Egypt] 
understood and agreed that they would hold al-Libi for a limited period. 
In the course of questioning while he was in US custody in Afghanistan, 
al-Libi made initial references to possible al-Qa'ida training in Iraq. 
He offered up information that a militant known as Abu Abdullah had told 
him that at least three times between 1997 and 2000, the now-deceased 
al-Qa'ida leader Mohammad Atef had sent Abu Abdullah to Iraq to seek 
training in poisons and mustard gas.
     "Another senior al-Qa'ida detainee told us that Mohammad Atef was 
interested in expanding al-Qa'ida's ties to Iraq, which, in our eyes, 
added credibility to the reporting. Then, shortly after the Iraq war got 
under way, al-Libi recanted his story. Now, suddenly, he was saying that 
there was no such cooperative training. Inside the CIA, there was sharp 
division on his recantation. It led us to recall his reporting, and here 
is where the mystery begins.
     "Al-Libi's story will no doubt be that he decided to fabricate in 
order to get better treatment and avoid harsh punishment. He clearly 
lied. We just don't know when. Did he lie when he first said that 
al-Qa'ida members received training in Iraq - or did he lie when he said 
they did not? In my mind, either case might still be true. Perhaps, 
early on, he was under pressure, assumed his interrogators already knew 
the story, and sang away. After time passed and it became clear that he 
would not be harmed, he might have changed his story to cloud the minds 
of his captors. Al-Qa'ida operatives are trained to do just that. A 
recantation would restore his stature as someone who had successfully 
confounded the enemy. The fact is, we don't know which story is true, 
and since we don't know, we can assume nothing. (pp. 353-354)"
Al-Libi was eventually sent off, quietly, to Libya - though he 
reportedly made a few other stops along the way - where he was 
imprisoned. The use of al-Libi’s statement in the build-up to the Iraq 
war made him a huge American liability once it became clear that the 
purported al-Qaeda–Saddam connection was a tortured lie. His whereabouts 
were, in fact, a secret for years, until April 2009 when Human Rights 
Watch researchers investigating the treatment of Libyan prisoners 
encountered him in the courtyard of a prison. 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.'
Kohlmann surmises and opines that, after al-Libi recounted his story 
about about an al-Qaeda–Saddam-WMD connection, "The Egyptians were 
embarassed by this admission - and the Bush government found itself in 
hot water internationally. Then, in May 2009, Omar Suleiman saw an 
opportunity to get even with al-Libi and travelled to Tripoli. By the 
time Omar Suleiman’s plane left Tripoli, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi had 
committed 'suicide'."
As people in Egypt and around the world speculate about the fate of the 
Mubarak regime, one thing should be very clear: Omar Suleiman is not the 
man to bring democracy to the country. His hands are too dirty, and any 
'stability' he might be imagined to bring to the country and the region 
comes at way too high a price. Hopefully, the Egyptians who are 
thronging the streets and demanding a new era of freedom will make his 
removal from power part of their demands, too.
Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California - Santa 
Barbara and is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.
This article first appeared on Jadaliyya.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not 
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201127114827382865.html

 
http://english.aljazeera.net/
Rotfl
-- 
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free 
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be 
infringed.

 Quello che dovrebbe guidare il paese verso la democrazia.
Notevoli FdP hanno fatto cose notevoli per la pace e la democrazia.
Vedi Botha, ad esempio. Io non dispero.
PP

 Quello che dovrebbe guidare il paese verso la democrazia.
Credo che ai manifestanti basterebbe un gesto dimostrativo
e per quello chiedono le dimissioni di Mubarak.
Sanno bene che con tutto il resto del regime devono "trattare"
Ciao! 

 Io non dispero.
Neanche io.
L'equilibrio che teneva in sella Mubarak e gli altri come lui è ormai 
rotto: i NFDP sono diventati anacronistici a causa della 
globalizzazione, non solo per le sollevazioni popolari.
Quello che possono fare i Suleiman è far si che venga versato molto 
sangue prima che i nuovi equilibri vengano raggiunti; può far si che 
quel momento venga ritardato il più possibile; può lasciare in eredità 
molto odio dietro di sé; può riuscire a dare tempo ai malfattori di 
scappare col bottino.  Ma  il cambiamento non lo può fermare.

 globalizzazione, 
Eppure tu ai TFDP sei affezionatissimo.
Si vede che sei un pirla localizzato.
-- 
recoil is insignificant when there is a tiger on the head of your elephant

 democratico italiano, di quelli ineccepibili - LOL!
Suvvia, prendila con sereno realismo: certa gente *è obbligata* a essere 
razzista e fascista a causa della sua scelta per l'ultranazionalismo.
E il "sionismo", in tutte le sue varianti, è ultranazionalismo.
Per la ditta Bagarozzo & Co Israele, la Nazione, è sopra e avanti a 
tutto, e se pensassero che altri 30 anni di dittatura in Egitto fossero 
utili per Israele allora farebbero tutto quello che è in loro potere 
perché così avvenga.
Non sono i primi e non saranno gli ultimi a concepire il mondo in questo 
modo, ma quello che rende unica e farneticante la loro scelta è che per 
Israele l'integralismo nazionalista è puro veleno, è una malattia 
mortale, sia per la sua collocazione geografica, sia per le sue 
dimensioni, sia perché il patrimonio spirituale che da senso al termine 
"ebraismo" ne è violentato e prosciugato.
Per quanto mi riguarda considero un dovere, anche verso Israele, 
denunciare per ciò che sono veramente questi fasci mascherati da 
democratici.

 Si vede che sei un pirla localizzato.
Non sai di che parli, e questo dimostra che sei un pirla.

 miliardi di dollari
none. 50 miliardi di euro, al cambio. I dollari sono SETTANTA miliardi

 Non sai di che parli
Oh sì che lo so.
-- 
Dead men may not talk, but they also don't lie.  [Chuck Hawks]

 Lisa Hajjar Last Modified: 07 Feb 2011 14:10 GMT
se così fosse ora l'Egitto non sarebbe a gambe all'aria...ma del resto la 
credibilità di Al Jazeera non è propriamente al massimo delle quotazioni... 
:-) 

 globalizzazione, non solo per le sollevazioni popolari.
In generale non sono daccordo. Prevedo FdP diversi che gestiranno il
riassetto
PP

 tutto, e se pensassero che altri 30 anni di dittatura in Egitto
30?
PP


Persio è un pirla cronologico


 30?
Come passa il tempo, vero?

 Persio è un pirla cronologico
Bagarozzo?  Ti si è fermato il calendario.
P.S.
Pirla.

 In generale non sono daccordo. Prevedo FdP diversi
senza soldi non si canta messa, e quelli non ci saranno più, per cui è
probabile che ci saranno altri fdp, ma improbabile che saranno i loro
(degli yankee) fdp.


Nasser non era un dittatore, era un capo di stato antimperialista,
socialista e benefattore del popolo

 riassetto
Dipende da cosa intendi per FDP e per riassetto.
Andreotti, ad esempio, consideri sia stato un "FDP"?  E la fedeltà 
atlantista dell'Italia garantita dalla DC nel secondo dopoguerra, lo 
consideri un "riassetto"?

 Dei Massu pronti alla tortura, che nel frattempo oliano fucili e pistole.
Uno dei due senza dubbio; l'altro non saprei.
Diciamo che chi auspicasse il sorgere di un nuovo regime autoritario in 
Egitto non sarebbe un fascio solo per quello che auspica ma anche perché 
sarebbe un idiota.
Ed è noto che la quasi totalità dei fasci sono idioti.

 Am.
- -- 
MGOK
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 E sposa l'esercito anche nelle torture, Videla style.
A meno che non mi sbagli di grosso, in questa storia l'esercito è dalla 
parte giusta, cioé dalla parte dell'amministrazione Obama.
Il dato fondamentale è che gli USA in questa fase non possono più 
permettersi di mantenere dei regimi kapò, dunque è nel loro interesse 
che a questi succedano dei regimi democratici, potenzialmente alleati.

 militare si e' messa contro il popolo
ROTFL



ROTFL


 E' cio' che speravano i nostri fascisti.
Che in genere toppano.


Veramente intendevo che sono molti di piu': l'Egitto indipendente è
sempre stato una dittatura. Con la differenza che i dittatori
precedenti facevano danno anche all'estero. E no, non solo in Israele
al quale hanno si fatto guerra, ma in modo tutto sommato corretto
secondo le consuetudini.
PP


ROFTL
PP

 consideri un "riassetto"?
Rispetto al fascismo ed alla monarchia? Direi di si.
PP

  wrote:

Tu e Amalric fate gran confusione tra auspicare e ritenere probabile
PP

 Raccogli la saponettah, codardo.
Ancora sbronzoh di Stella?
PP

 USA.
Complimentih
PP

 socialista e benefattore del popolo
Vuoi tornare indietro nel tempo fino al Faraone?
Si stava parlando di Mubarak, o sagace e massiccio rivoluzionario.


Ok, quanti?  Fai tu una cifra, dai.


Almeno 59.
PP

 Me ne farai ancora di piu' domani,
Solo se t'impegni.
PP

 Almeno 59.
Sei piuttosto benevolo con Re Farouk :-)

 Sei piuttosto benevolo con Re Farouk :-)
Non considero l'Egitto di Farouk indipendente, di li lo sconto.
PP


Dunque 60 anni fa l'Egitto era un paese democratico?


60 anni fa non era responsabile di se stesso, era una semicolonia. Ora
potresti per favore dirmi perche' consideri Mubarak un dittatore e i
suoi due predecessori no?
PP

 socialista e benefattore del popolo
B U U U U U U U M M M M M M M M M M
F.
-- 
"Parliamo di Gnech. Che la sua doppiezza sia studiata ne
dubito, ma che si tratti di doppiezza � riscontrabile
da ci� che scrive." (Persio su it.politica.internazionale)
http://flaneurotic.wordpress.com/

 Si stava parlando di Mubarak, o sagace e massiccio rivoluzionario.
Mi piace questa vostra dialettica. Amarilllo non � cos� massiccio, cmq.
E nemmeno tanto sagace. Sul rivoluzionario, poi...



Non è questo il punto.  Ho quantificato in 30 anni la dittatura in 
Egitto solo perché il focus era su Mubarak.

 E nemmeno tanto sagace. Sul rivoluzionario, poi...
Tra comunisti ogni tanto ci si prende per il culo.

 B U U U U U U U M M M M M M M M M M
Mi stava prendendo per il culo ironizzando sui 30 anni.
E' molto sagace.

 Egitto solo perché 
Il perché lo sappiamo, grazie.
-- 
recoil is insignificant when there is a tiger on the head of your elephant


Dunque non potrebbe essere che una sorta di Andreotti e una specie di DC 
soddisferebbero le esigenze di affidabilità e di economicità che gli USA 
(e non solo) vorrebbero come soluzione per il nuovo Egitto?

socialista e benefattore del popolo
ridicolo....
Quando � morto Nasser gli egiziani giravano con le pezze nel diddietro...in 
confronto Mubarak � un sant'uomo... 


Ok, t'eri sbagliato. Succede.
PP


Se l'Egitto fosse l'Italia del '48 e ci fosse la guerra fredda forse
si, ma così non è.
PP

 B U U U U U U U M M M M M M M M M M
mai parlato con un compagno egiziano, eh? Si vede...



Non ti intendi di astrarre.


Non t'intendi di essere originale.
PP