It’s one of the oldest tricks in the spying book: Tempt a guy with sex; record him in a compromising position, and then blackmail him into working for you. According to a new file released by WikiLeaks, that’s exactly what happened to one inmate there. But be wary of this espionage tale. As with a lot of Gitmo detainee accounts, the detainee’s history of trying to please interrogators and his experience being tortured make it difficult to say for sure what really happened.
Abd Al Rahim Abdul Raza Janko (pictured) told interrogators at Guantanamo Bay that his journey into an al-Qaida guest house began with blackmail while he was studying Islamic law and Arabic literature in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He claimed Prince Fisal Sudid Qasmi invited him to hang out with his college friends at a local hotel. When he arrived, he said a raging sex party was already in progress and he promptly took part in it. Weeks later, Janko said Qasmi confronted him with a videotape of the party, threatening to send it to a television station or his family if he didn’t agree to spy for the UAE. The confrontation, according to Janko, kicked off an odyssey that began with him snooping on Filipino classmates’ plans to smuggle fighters back home and ended with him heading to Afghanistan in early 2000 to spy on al-Qaida.
Using sex to blackmail subjects is a longstanding practice among intelligence services. In his memoir of life as an informant for British and French intelligence, Omar Nasiri, a pseudonymous graduate of the Khalden jihadi training camp in Afghanistan, recounted how British intelligence used the threat of blackmail to pressure a gay Muslim friend into spying on Islamist extremists in Britain. In a particularly sickening case from he mid-1990s, Egyptian intelligence services reportedly photographed the drugging and rape of an al-Qaida member’s young son, using the incident to pressure him into planting microphones at home.
Much of the material from the Gitmo documents comes with complicating caveats, though, and Janko’s case is certainly no exception. His detainee assessment shows a history of mental health problem that includes “substance abuse, depression, borderline personality disorder, and prior suicide attempt.” Joint Task Force-Guantanamo stated that since he had admitted lying to please his interrogators and changed his story so many times that “it is difficult to determine what is factual, what may be a cover story, and what may be embellishment or fabrication.”
His lawyer also denied the charges, stating that Janko’s traveled to Afghanistan not to spy for the UAE or join al-Qaida, but just as a pit stop on his way to apply for refugee status in either Europe or Canada.
Janko’s torture didn’t help clear up the matter either. He claimed to have stayed in an al-Qaida guest house in Kabul and participated in small arms training at the Faruq camp upon arriving in Afghanistan. Shortly afterwards, though, al-Qaida’s military commander, Mohammed Atef, confronted him with accusations he was a snitch not just for the UAE, but the United States and Israel, as well. Al-Qaida considered the matter settled once they managed to torture him into a videotaped confession to the accusations — a confession which he later claimed to be false.
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