Abd Al Rahim Abdul Rassak Janko

Abd al-Rahim Abdul Rassak al-Janko (عبدالرحیم عبدالرزاق الجنکو; born 1977), a Syrian-Kurd, 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 Taliban Amnesty International condemned the use of a video showing al-Janko being interrogated by militants as proof of his association with them as "kafkaesque".

While held at Guantanamo, his captors noted that "as a result of his [Taliban] imprisonment, [he] could not have participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces", and noted that "it is unlikely [he] would 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 on 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 the United States. 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. He 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.

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, A video of Al-Rahim was also found in the rubble, of his interrogation - ostensibly following torture - by Atef himself. The video showed his reaction to Atef's questioning of his sexuality, and claims that he had spied on behalf of the Americans and Israelis. A composite image created by the FBI to show how al-Rahim may try to disguise himself. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft called upon people worldwide to help "identify, locate and incapacitate terrorists who are suspected of planning additional attacks against innocent civilians... These men could be anywhere in the world." Ashcroft added that an analysis of the audio suggested "the men may be trained and prepared to commit future suicide terrorist acts."

On that day, Ramzi bin al-Shibh was one of the only four known names among the five. Ashcroft said not much was known about any of them except bin al-Shibh. The other initial known three are still featured in compiled video clips on the FBI site, in order of appearance, Muhammad Sa'id Ali Hasan, al-Janko, and Khalid Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani. The fifth subject was identified a week later as Abderraouf Jdey.

Al-Janko, along with three others, was later removed by the FBI from the official count on the main page of the Seeking Information list. By February 2, 2003, the FBI rearranged its entire wanted lists on its web site, into the current configuration. The outstanding five martyr video suspects (including Jdey's Montreal associate Boussora) were moved to a separate linked page, titled "Martyrdom Messages/video, Seeking Information Alert" (Although both Jdey and Boussora were later returned to the main FBI list page). Around this time the FBI also changed the name of the list, to the FBI "Seeking Information - War on Terrorism", to distinguish it from its other wanted list of "Seeking Information," which the FBI already uses for ordinary fugitives, those who are not terrorists.

Imprisonment by the United States Al-Janko was held at Kandahar Air Base from January 2002 through May 2002, and was then transferred to Guantanamo's detention camps in May 2002.

Coerced denouncements of other prisoners During his testimony at his own Combatant Status Review Tribunal, an Iraqi refugee, Arkan Mohammad Ghafil Al Karim, said that after al-Janko had been arrested, tortured and interrogated by the Taliban, he had fingered al-Karim as an accomplice in the fictitious American spy ring - leading to their mutual imprisonment by the Taliban, and transfer to American imprisonment two years later.

In total, records show that al-Janko's statements to interrogators were used as evidence against a total of 20 other detainees at Guantanamo.

Habeas corpus A writ of habeas corpus, Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Ginco v. Robert M. Gates, was submitted on Al Ginco [al-Janko]'s behalf. The United States Department of Defense published the unclassified dossiers from 179 captives' Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

On 16 June 2008, the United States Supreme Court declined to consider his mandamus request.

Relocation to Belgium Under the Obama Administration, al- Janko was quietly released to Belgium on October 7 or 9, 2009, becoming the third Guantanamo captive transferred to the European nation. Belgium requested the United States not disclose al-Janko's identity at the time of release.

He now lives, under an assumed identity and reliant on social assistance, in Antwerp as a formal resident of Belgium.

Complaint for damages In October 2010, Janko sued George Bush and Barack Obama for orchestrating and overseeing his torture, from being urinated on to lengthy sleep deprivation, harsh interrogations and severe beatings. The lawsuit claimed he tried to commit suicide in Guantanamo 17 times.