Egypt State Media Says Suleiman, Former Mubarak Official, Dies

By ROD NORDLAND and KAREEM FAHIM

Published: July 19, 2012

CAIRO — Omar Suleiman, the once-powerful head of Egypt’s intelligence service who represented the old regime’s last attempt to hold onto power, died in an American hospital early Thursday, according to the state-owned Middle East News Agency.

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Nasser Nasser/Associated Press

Omar Suleiman in 2009.

Egyptian critics immediately saw his death in the United States as emblematic of his close ties with America’s Central Intelligence Agency, which he helped to establish the practice of extraordinary rendition and, critics say, the torture of terrorism suspects.

When the C.I.A. asked Mr. Suleiman if he could provide a DNA sample from a brother of the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Suleiman offered to send the agency the brother’s entire arm instead, Ron Suskind, the author of “The One Percent Doctrine,” told ABC News.

Mr. Suleiman’s supporters, however, mourned the loss of a moderate regime figure who might have served as a buffer between military rule on the one hand and a growing Islamic dominance on the other.

In 18 years as the head of the powerful General Intelligence Directorate, a domestic and international intelligence agency 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 Mr. Mubarak’s “black box.”

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. Later he 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, however, 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 as well.

Mr. Suleiman was the first head of the powerful 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 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, because he viewed the organization as an extension of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood.

“I think a lot of secrets will die with him,” said Nabil Fahmy, the 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 had a more trenchant view. “He’s a charitable man, friendly,” Mr. Suskind told ABC. “He tortures only people that he doesn’t know.”

Under Mr. Suleiman’s tenure, his agency was widely accused of involvement in the torture of dissidents. He was considered a staunch opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and an architect of the long ban on that organization’s participation in political life, which ended with its victory in this year’s presidential elections. He was also deeply involved in the C.I.A.’s program of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects were sent to countries where they could be tortured, according to an article in The New Yorker and a number of books.

The first known case of rendition, that of Talaat Fuad Qassem, was to Egypt in 1995, according to Omar Ashour, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Doha Center.

Mr. Suleiman’s public speeches during the Tahrir Square revolution, denouncing protesters as agents of foreign governments and claiming that Egypt was unready for democracy, eroded public support for him. As a former lieutenant general in the Egyptian military, he would be entitled to burial with military honors, but some critics here were already arguing against that.

At the same, many moderate Egyptians looked to Mr. Suleiman, and later 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,” said Mr. Ashour. “For pro-Mubarak he is a source of stability in the country and a bulwark against Islamist advance.”

As the most prominent regime figure other than Mr. Mubarak himself, Mr. Suleiman’s death comes at a symbolic moment. The former president was returned earlier this week to prison, after the relative comfort of a military hospital, and the new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, was due to meet Thursday with Khaled Meshal, the top political leader of Hamas.

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 news agency said that he died suddenly “while he was undergoing medical examination,” while Al Ahram, the state-owned newspaper, said he died at a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. There was no indication of the cause of death.

Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.