Laura
Rosen of Politico writes that “the United States supports talks on an
orderly transition being led by Egyptian Vice President Gen. Omar
Suleiman,” who was recently appointed vice president by Hosni Mubarak.
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A human right lawyer, Hawkins has been a researcher for Jane Mayer, author of
The Dark Side and the new piece “
Who is Omar Suleiman?”
in The New Yorker Mayer writes: “Suleiman has headed the feared
Egyptian general intelligence service.
In that capacity, he was the
CIA’s point man in Egypt for renditions — the covert program in which
the CIA snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them
to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal
circumstances.”
Mayer added to her piece: “Katherine Hawkins, a sharp-eyed
human-rights lawyer who did legal research for my book, points out that,
according to [author Ron] Suskind, Suleiman was the CIA’s liaison for
the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi. The
Libi case is particularly controversial, in large part because it played
a role in the building of the case for the American invasion of Iraq.”
Hawkins wrote “The Promises of Torturers: Diplomatic Assurances and the Legality of Rendition.” Also, see some of her recent updates.
LISA HAJJAR
Hajjar is a professor in the sociology department at the University of California-Santa Barbara and a co-editor at the 
new journal Jadaliyya, where she recently wrote the piece “Omar Suleiman, the CIA’s Man in Cairo and Egypt’s Torturer-in-Chief.”
The piece states: “At least one person extraordinarily rendered by
the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was
tortured by Suleiman himself. …
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 allegedly was 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, though, that
‘confession’ was a lie tortured out of him by Egyptians. …
“Acc
ording to Evan Kohlmann, who enjoys favored status as an
‘al-Qaeda expert’ among U.S. officials, 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 an al-Qaeda-Saddam WMD connection,
‘The Egyptians were embarrassed 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 traveled
to Tripoli. By the time Omar Suleiman’s plane left Tripoli, Ibn
al-Sheikh al-Libi had committed “suicide.”‘”
Background: See Hossam Bahgat, founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Interviewed on
Democracy Now
on Monday, he highlighted critical information about Suleiman,
including information gleaned via WikiLeaks.
Bahgat noted that until
2007, Egyptians didn’t know who Omar Suleiman was “because up until
then, he was not a public persona. We did not know who the head of our
intelligence service was.”
Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, wrote after al-Libi’s “suicide” in 2009:
“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh
interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice
Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for
intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on
the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.
“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even
when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their
detainee ‘was compliant’ (meaning the team recommended no more torture),
the VP’s office [Cheney] ordered them to continue the enhanced methods.
The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This
ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt,
‘revealed’ such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi
revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
“There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just
‘committed suicide’ in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers
working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan
government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)”
See video of Colin Powell denying any knowledge of the al-Libi case at Washington Stakeout on May 25, 2009 [questioning by Sam Husseini]
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
