Vice President Omar Suleiman of Egypt says he does not think it is time to lift the 30-year-old emergency law that has been used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders. He does not think President Hosni Mubarak needs to resign before his term ends in September. And he does not think his country is yet ready for democracy.

But, lacking better options, the United States is encouraging him in negotiations in a still uncertain transition process in Egypt. . . . The result has been to feed a perception, on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, that the United States, for now at least, is putting stability ahead of democratic ideals, and leaving hopes of nurturing peaceful, gradual change in large part in the hands of Egyptian officials — starting with Mr. Suleiman — who have every reason to slow the process.

Lisa Hajjar, Al Jazeera English, today:

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. . . . 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. . . .

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.

WikiLeaks cable, posted from U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, August 29, 2008:

[Israeli defense official David] Hacham said the Israeli delegation was “shocked” by Mubarak’s aged appearance and slurred speech. Hacham was full of praise for Soliman, however, and noted that a “hot line” set up between the [Israeli Ministry of Defense] and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is now in daily use. Hacham said he sometimes speaks to Soliman’s deputy Mohammed Ibrahim several times a day. Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated. (Note: We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.)  

Given the long-obvious fact that the Obama administration has been working to install Suleiman as interim leader as a (dubious) means of placating citizen anger, the above-referenced NYT article today offers a long and detailed profile of the new Egyptian “Vice President.”  Unfortunately, the paper of record wasn’t able to find the space to inform its readers about Suleiman’s decades-long history as America’s personal abducter, detainer and torturer of the Egyptian people, nor his status as Israel’s most favored heir to the Mubarak tyranny (though the article did vaguely and euphemistically acknowledge that “the United States has certainly had long ties with Mr. Suleiman” and that “for years he has been an important contact for the Central Intelligence Agency”).