ISN 489

A Syrian-Kurd, Abd al-Rahim Abdul Rassak al-Janko (عبدالرحیم عبدالرزاق الجنکو) is a former student in the United Arab Emirates who traveled to Afghanistan in 2000, where he was captured by the Taliban who announced that he had confessed to plotting to murder Osama bin Laden, as well as spying against the Taliban on behalf of Israel and the United States. He was also denounced for "his sexual indiscretions with other young men" and accused of homosexuality. Following the Invasion of Afghanistan, al-Janko begged a British journalist to alert the Americans that he had been held prisoner by the Taliban for two years; however, he was taken from the Taliban prison by American forces, and sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camps where he spent seven years in detention.

When a videotape of al-Janko's 2000 interrogation on charges of sodomy and espionage against the TalibanDetainee Assessment Brief ISN 489
was discovered by American forces in the rubble of Mohammed Atef's house; the Bush administration released the video, which showed al-Janko breaking down in tears, but stripped the tape of its audiotrack and falsely declared that it was a "martyrdom video", claiming that al-Janko spoke of dying as a martyr following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Although U.S. officials internally acknowledged the video to be his filmed interrogation by the Taliban, the American government publicly continued labelling it as a "martyrdom" recording, and added al-Janko to the FBI Seeking Information - War on Terrorism list.
Amnesty International condemned the use of a video showing al-Janko being interrogated by militants as proof of his association with them as "kafkaesque".Parker, Tom,
Obama Embracing Bush Legacy
" ''Human Rights Now Blog'', 1 July 2009.

While held at Guantanamo, his captors noted that "as a result of his alibanimprisonment, ecould not have participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces", and noted that "it is unlikely ewould ever ever be trusted by an Islamic militant group", but tribunals nevertheless repeated classified him as an "enemy combatant". Medical staff also wrote that he suffered from depression, had attempted suicide, and was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder; the United States thus assessed him as a "high threat from a detention perspective" and noted that he had 112 discipline infractions in his file for throwing food, failing to follow instructions, exposing his sexual organs and possession of food contraband. Al-Janko maintains that the BPD diagnosis was intended to mask his posttraumatic stress disorder arising from his mistreatment and captivity by the Taliban and United States.

On June 20, 2008, he became the first Guantanamo detainee to demand in a U.S. federal court that the military show evidence that justified his detention.

The judge ruled that the American argument in favour of holding al-Janko in continued captivity "defies common sense".

He was quietly released by the United States in 2009, after seven years' captivity, and is currently living in Antwerpen, Belgium.

Life prior to imprisonment

Al-Janko was born in Turkey, the fourth son of 11 children, and was four years old when his Kurdish parents were killed by Turkish troops in 1980. He was subsequently taken to Syria by his stepparents for the next ten years, before his Salafist stepfather took a teaching position in Ajman, UAE in 1990, and his stepmother and siblings brought him to Ajman a couple years later.

Al-Janko attended Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in the Emirates from 1998 to 2000, studying law and literature, together with Faiz Mohammed Ahmed Al Kandari and Abd Al Aziz Sayer Uwain Al Shammeri.

Al-Janko told interrogators he was invited to a college party at a local hotel however, by Prince Fisal Sudid Qasmi, before he left. He says that when he arrived, group sex was underway and he participated in the orgy; but Qasmi later blackmailed him, threatening to expose the videotape to his stepfather or the media, unless al-Janko would agree to spy on professors and students advocating travel for jihad. He later retracted this statement as being coerced under torture, and dismissed his admissions of drug addiction, homosexuality and spying as all being false.

Al-Janko later told his lawyers he ended up in Afghanistan after running away from his "strict Muslim tepather". whom he complained was "controlling, abusive and violent" and "ran away" six months after the alleged blackmail began, telling interrogators that he had unsuccessfully spoken to the embassies of Canada, Syria and the United States, seeking an opportunity to leave the Emirates behind, but eventually colleagues at the Mosab bin Omer Center, in the Mishref neighbourhood of Ajman, convinced him he could travel to Afghanistan by simply posing as an illegal Afghan migrant worker in the UAE, and then apply to Western countries for asylum as an Afghan refugee. al-Janko claims he successfully impersonated an illegal worker, and successfully got himself "deported" to Afghanistan at the expense of the Emirati government.

In Afghanistan, al-Janko used the name ''Dujana al-Kurdi'', and spent 18–45 days at Al Farouq training camp, where he claims to have spent his time doing "menial chores" such as chopping wood, cleaning weapons and hauling water, until a commander named al-Saidi turned him over to Atef and Saif al-Adel at the Ghulam Bachi safehouse on suspicion he was a spy. Al-Janko maintains this was likely because the day he was ordered to prepare to fight on the front lines, he requested permission to leave the camp, fearing for his safety.

Other parts of his life, such as allegations his stepfather was a terrorist, that he was working as a spy for the governments of Israel, the United States or UAE were suspected of simply "trying to please his interrogators" or "protect his family members from...retribution".

Imprisonment by Taliban

In January 2000, after only weeks in Afghanistan, al-Jenko was taken into custody by al-Qaeda, who accused him of espionage on behalf of Israel, the United States and the UAE, as well as drug addiction and homosexual sodomy. He was turned over to the Taliban on May 1 for 25 years of imprisonment at Sarposa prison, after allegedly confessing to Atef that he was guilty, and that Arkan Mohammad Ghafil Al Karim was "the Iraqi emir of the espionage ring". Al-Karim was subsequently also arrested by the Taliban, and eventually also transported to Guantanamo alongside al-Janko.

In July 2000, the Taliban printed a transcript of the confession, which included the statements that al-Janko had been corrupted by an "evil acquaintance" who introduced him to Sony PlayStation, pornography and fictitious Israeli spymaster "Shamoyel Anty". They also played the video of al-Janko's confession on Emirati television, shaming his family and causing his stepfather to denounce him.

Transfer from Taliban to US custody

Janko was one of nine American prisoners the ''Associated Press'' pointed out had gone straight from Taliban custody to American custody.

Tim Reid, writing in ''The Times,'' recorded how he met al-Janko in January 2002 when he was stranded in Kandahar after his release from two years in brutal Taliban custody.

Reid described finding al-Janko, and four other foreign prisoners, as the only remaining occupants of a Taliban prison, which had been abandoned and emptied after the Taliban's collapse.

While sitting in the Sarposa prison for the weeks between the Taliban's departure, and the Americans' entrance, al-Janko met with photojournalist Thorne Anderson, Michael Ware of ''Time'' magazine, Pierre Lhuillery of AFP and Tim Reid of ''The Times'', most of whom would later submit to the courts their observations that al-Janko had clearly been physically tortured and was mentally unstable when they met him. Ware took up al-Janko's cause and sought international assistance in aiding him, as did Reid, not expecting that the Americans would take them into captivity.

Discovery of interrogation video

On January 14, 2002, five video cassettes were recovered from the rubble of the destroyed home of Mohammad Atef outside Kabul, Afghanistan. The tapes showed Abderraouf Jdey, Ramzi bin al-Shibh