Ammon News - AMMONNEWS-Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s former spy chief and Hosni Mubarak’s vice president, has died in the US while undergoing medical examination, an aide has said.

"He was fine. It came suddenly while he was having medical tests in Cleveland," Hussein Kamal said on Thursday, without giving a reason for Suleiman's death.

The former intelligence chief stepped briefly into the limelight when he was made vice president on January 29, days before Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising last year.

On February 11, Suleiman appeared on state television for a brief statement in which he announced that the president was "waiving" his office, and had handed over authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

He was a central figure in Egyptian politics for more than 15 years after he took over the country's intelligency agency in 1993.

He joined the race for the country's presidency in April, but his candidature was rejected for failing to collect a sufficient number of signatures from 15 Egyptian governorates.

Suleiman was born in Qena, in the south of Egypt and left for Cairo at the age of 19 to enroll in Egypt's military academy and went on to receive advanced army training in Russia.

He took part in both the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars, though details of his service are unclear.

Both Mubarak and Suleiman survived an assassination attempt in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, where they were due to attend an African summit in June 1995.






*Al Jazeera