Who is Omar Suleiman?

Omar Suleiman (born July 2, 1936) is an Egyptian politician and military figure who has been Vice President of Egypt since January 2011. Previously, he was Minister without Portfolio and Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), the national intelligence agency, from 1993 to 2011. In his role as Director of EGID, the British Daily Telegraph dubbed him as “one of the world’s most powerful spy chiefs”. Foreign Policy magazine ranked him the Middle East’s most powerful intelligence chief, ahead of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

Suleiman was born in Qena in Southern Egypt. He left Qena for Cairo in 1954, at the age of nineteen, to enroll in Egypt’s prestigious Military Academy. He received additional military training in the former Soviet Union at Moscow’s Frunze Military Academy. Furthermore, he holds bachelors and master degrees in Political Science from Ain Shams and Cairo Universities in the mid-1980s. Suleiman was transferred to military intelligence, where he began what was to be a long relationship between Egypt and the United States.

Due to his role in the regional political scene and the lack of an alternative candidate acceptable to Hosni Mubarak, some have speculated that Suleiman will succeed Mubarak as President, or at least become a Vice-President. On January 29, 2011, he was named vice-president during the civil unrest, ending a vacancy in the position that lasted almost 30 years.