Omar Suleiman, the former Egyptian vice-president, has been questioned in connection with violence against protesters during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the president, the general prosecutor's office has said.
Suleiman, the country's long-time chief of intelligence, was questioned about "information held by the intelligence services on the events of the January 25 revolution," the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.
He was asked about "the killing of protesters during peaceful [anti-regime] protests and over the wealth of the former president and his family," it said.
Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt since 1981, named Suleiman his first ever vice-president on January 29 in a bid to placate the growing protest movement.
Nationwide protests that erupted on January 25 and eventually toppled Mubarak's regime on February 11.
Rawya Rageh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Cairo, said: "It actually is not clear if Omar Suleiman is under house arrest or not.
"We do know for a fact that he's not being detained pending those investigations, we know that he was summoned on Monday to be questioned over information he would have been privy to in his capacity as intelligence chief of the country.
"We know that there has been no official announcement banning him from travel like the other members of the inner circle of president Mubarak."
Revised death toll
A government fact-finding mission announced on Tuesday that at least 846 Egyptians died in the nearly three-week-long popular uprising.
In their report, the panel of judges described police forces shooting protesters in the head and chest with live ammunition and presented a death toll more than twice that of previous official estimates.
"The fatal shots were due to firing bullets at the head and the chest," the report read, adding that "a huge number of eye injures," filled hospitals, and hundreds lost their sight.
Earlier official estimates put out by a Mubarak associate had put the toll from the days of demonstrations, in which protesters battled heavily armed legions of riot police, at 365, but local groups had put the figure much higher.
The mission held Mubarak ultimately responsible for the killing of the protesters since Habib el-Adly, his interior minister, had issued the orders to open fire.
Omar Marwan, the head of the commission, said the report is based on the accounts of 17,058 officials and eyewitnesses, along with 800 video clips and pictures obtained from individuals who were present at the protests.
PHOTO CAPTION
Former Egyptian vice president Omar Suleiman, seen here in an image grab from Egyptian state television Al-Masriya in February, 2011.
Al-Jazeera