Director of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s office General Abbas Kamel will be sworn before Sisi as the new director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service (GIS) on Thursday, Al-Ahram newspaper reported.
Earlier this year in January, Sisi issued a presidential decree appointing his office director General Abbas Kamel as the acting director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate.
Al-Ahram reported at that time that the decree would be enforced until Sisi appoints a new permanent director to replace the former head, General Khaled Fawzy.
The establishment of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate was undertaken by former-President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954. At the time, the directorate was commanded by Zakaria Mohieddin, an army officer who participated in Egypt’s 1952 revolution.
The directorate’s importance rose when Nasser assigned Salah Nasr as its new commander, who held the post of director of it from 1957 to 1967 and thoroughly reorganized its structure. Under Nasr’s supervision, the directorate relocated its headquarters to its own building and established a separate division for Radio, Computer, Forgery, and Black Operations.
To cover the directorate’s expenses, Nasr set up the Al-Nasr Company, which, as an ostensible front, posed as an import-export firm.
Often the identity of the directorate’s director was kept secret, known only to high-level officials and state-newspaper chief editors. However, late Major-General Omar Suleiman, director from 1993 until January 2011, was the first to break the silence.
In 2012, following the uprisings which rocked the country the previous year, the directorate published for the first time a documentary detailing its history and most prominent achievements. The documentary was named ‘Kelmat Watan’ (The Nation’s Word).
