From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel

by Alex Gilvarry

  During Boy’s final session, the same interrogator started early, at 0600, and came out of Boy’s cell less than an hour later shaking his head. He looked “disturbed,” according to Coco. The man walked down the dark corridor to where another interrogator on a break was smoking a cigarette. “This is a fucking reach around,” Boy’s interrogator said. “He doesn’t know jack shit.”

  The smoking man made a gesture with his shoulders, indifferent, and Boy’s interrogator said, “Get him the fuck out of here.”

  From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Boy was moved to Camp Echo not on November 11, as the Pentagon records attest, but on November 18, one week later.

  The cells in Echo are divided into two rooms. One makes

  up the prisoner’s living quarters, with a bed and a toilet-sink combo. The other half holds a steel table, two chairs, and an I‑bolt cemented to the ground. This is where Boy would eventually meet with his lawyer.

  Boy was without the pen and paper he had occupied himself with in Delta. Everything he’d been permitted to keep with him in his old cell had been taken away, including the English copy of the Qur’an that once belonged to the prisoner David Hicks. There were no longer any guards for Boy to converse with. And no one else could be heard on his new cell block. On November 27, after several grueling days in extreme isolation, and stripped of his ability to write or communicate with anyone, Boy tried to take his own life.

  Using his towel and strips of cloth from a white undershirt, he fashioned a noose and tied it to the bars dividing the two rooms of his cell. He stuffed the remaining fabric into his mouth to stifle any noise he would make during the act.

  When the guards, who routinely checked in on each prisoner every ten minutes, found Boy, he was still alive, struggling to hold on to the noose around his neck. He had one foot toeing the edge of the bed, barely keeping his body aloft.

  The guards rushed in and cut him down.

  He spent only two days in the infirmary under evaluation until he was deemed fit to return to his cell in Echo.

  Boy’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal was again delayed.

  Ted Catallano first met with Boy in early December 2006. BEHAVE was now everywhere, and the Pentagon could no longer delay Catallano’s requests to meet with his client. They were, however, able to delay the consultation just enough so that Catallano had only a week to prepare Boy for the CSRT that had been rescheduled. Catallano would not be able to defend Boy, because it was a military proceeding, but he was notified that Boy would be defending himself. This worried Catallano for several reasons. The CSRTs had been under contention since they were created. They have been considered “mock trials” by many reputable litigators involved in these cases. Catallano has said, “At any other time these processes would be illegal. And any time we make movement in court to shut them down, the administration overrides the ruling, which in my opinion is a disgusting abuse of executive power.” What worried him even more was that Boy refused to meet with his designated personal representative, a request the command at Guantánamo honored without fuss.

  When Catallano arrived at Echo, he brought with him a hot mocha latte from Starbucks, a Big Mac, french fries, and a vanilla shake. All of these he had purchased on the opposite side of the bay, where the litigators stayed. On their first day together, Boy was somber and not readily willing to cooperate. He felt betrayed by his federal interrogator, Special Agent Spyro Papandakkas, and he was traumatized by his time in solitary confinement and the stressful techniques he had been exposed to. The idea of going over his defense with someone completely new, just days before his tribunal, exhausted Boy. “He wasn’t happy to see me in the least,” said Catallano. “This man had been broken. In my opinion he was not fit to defend himself in a tribunal. I petitioned to get us more time, but we were denied. I had to win him over in a very short time frame.” Catallano tried to convince Boy to accept the military’s counsel but was unsuccessful. So with only a few days left, Catallano started to prepare Boy for the trial of his life. At night he read a copy of Boy’s confession, a document that had been submitted as evidence, known during the trial as Exhibit 3B. Their preparation had been curt, but by the end he felt confident that Boy could handle it. “He was a public figure who loved the limelight. Once I was able to get through to him, I knew he’d step up. We had prepared his opening and closing statements, which he wrote himself. And from his words alone, I knew he could do it.”

  The tribunal took place on December 9, 2006, in a makeshift courtroom inside a trailer. Catallano watched the proceedings on a black-and-white monitor in a neighboring trailer set up for journalists and lawyers. Boy met his personal representative for the first time on the morning of his CSRT as he arrived at the tribunal.

  According to the allegations given at the Hernandez tribunal, Boy’s detention was due to the following:

  (1) On October 9, 2006, a federal jury in Newark, New Jersey, found AHMED QURESHI guilty on five counts of terrorism and other felony charges, including his material support of a group of Somali terrorists known as the ASPCA (the Armed Somali People’s Coalition of Autonomy). QURESHI was arrested in Newark, New Jersey, at a Sheraton hotel after bomb-making materials (ammonium nitrate fertilizer) were exchanged with a Cooperating Witness working with the FBI. (2) AHMED QURESHI stated that he cultivated a relationship with the ASPCA in order to sell bomb-making devices while having full knowledge of the group’s intent: to target several highly populated spaces and landmarks in and around New York City, including Bryant Park during Fashion Week, among others. QURESHI stated that he had hoped to retain a relationship with the Somalis, who were interested in obtaining more bomb-making materials and other weapons such as antiaircraft guns and Stinger missiles. QURESHI also stated that he had an inside man, a “sleeper,” already working in the New York fashion industry. QURESHI identified the inside man as the Detainee, BOYET R. HERNANDEZ. QURESHI stated that HERNANDEZ was the “money” behind the “operation,” that he controlled the funds and was known in certain groups as the “emir of Seventh Avenue.” QURESHI also stated that HERNANDEZ was an associate of BIN LADEN (sic).4 (3) A second Cooperating Witness stated that the Detainee planned to travel to Pakistan to acquire materials. On two separate occasions the CW transferred $50,000 United States dollars into the Detainee’s business account for the Detainee.5 (4) QURESHI stated that the Detainee was the facilitator of these funding requests and that the Detainee knew about the ASPCA and their targets. (5) The Detainee sent a text message to QURESHI in 2004 that read: “Took Rudy back to sleeper cell and introduced her to my leader.” (6) The Detainee made a diary entry in 2004 in which he stated he would “wage war” against other “designers” in the United States. (7) The Detainee made a second diary entry in 2004 in which he stated he would demolish Fashion Week if he were not permitted to show his collection “this time.” (8) QURESHI stated that the Detainee told him on one occasion that he was working on a “counterattack” with BIN LADEN. (Let the record show at this time the similarity between the Detainee’s publicist Benjamin Laden, aka Ben Laden, and OSAMA BIN LADEN. Any confusion in this count and previous counts will be clarified at this hearing.)

  It is Ted Catallano’s opinion that all of the allegations made against Boy could have been cleared up in one afternoon at Federal Plaza and Boy’s detention avoided entirely. But because the climate after 2005 was so volatile, paranoia was infectious, and actions were taken to the extreme. It was less than a year before Qureshi’s arrest that four suicide bombers had attacked the London transit system using ingredients similar to what Qureshi had been dealing in: ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

  “The allegations were absurd,” said Catallano. “They would never have held up in a U.S. court of law. It was cleverly disguised hearsay all based on what one informant alleged while trying to save his own ass. Qureshi was a known criminal prone to tell lies. They knew that from the beginning.”

  The tribunal lasted a week. The verdict was decided by the convening authorit
y in Washington, not by the council of military personnel present at the hearing. With the pressure on, the convening authority made their decision within a few days. They determined that the evidence against Hernandez was insubstantial, and there was “no credible information that Hernandez provided material support to terrorist groups.” Boy’s status as a non-enemy combatant was made official. He would be returned home.

  V.

  I wrote to Ted Catallano while Boy was still awaiting transfer back to his home country of the Philippines. Catallano had me over to his office on West Twenty-fourth Street, close to the garment district. He informed me that the Pentagon had placed Boy under a gag order, one of the conditions of his release being that he not speak to the media about his experiences inside the prison for the term of one year. It was the government’s way of stifling any further embarrassment. I found it rather odd that America was keeping a wrongfully accused man under such a strict leash when he had been found innocent by their own tribunal. When I asked Catallano, he said, “It’s a condition set by the military. We’re working on getting it reversed. They’ve threatened to have him extradited back to the United States and prosecuted if he breaks the agreement.”

  “So he can’t talk to me under any circumstances?” I asked. “Even as a friend?”

  “Sure, he could talk to you as a friend, but if you were to publish anything that the Pentagon determined to be a breach of the agreement, they could go after him. And what they determine to be a breach of the agreement is exactly what’s uncertain. You see, they’ve been making it up as they go along since the beginning. Each day we’re waiting to see what they’ll come up with next. Look at the Detainee Treatment Act. Look at the Military Commissions Act.”

  The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus petitions filed by prisoners. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that military commissions violated the Geneva Conventions signed in 1949, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 again authorized military commissions to try those accused of violations of the law of war, explicitly forbidding the invocation of the Geneva Conventions when executing the writ of habeas corpus.

  However, at the time of my meeting with Catallano, I was unfamiliar with these developments.

  “I’m unfamiliar,” I admitted.

  “Well, get familiar.”

  Catallano was rather gruff about the situation. He had jumped through hoop after hoop in the Hernandez case, and once he felt progress was being made, he’d suddenly get hit with a clause that had been reinterpreted by the administration, and which would delay his progress for months. Though he didn’t say it, I could sense that Catallano thought my article trite and misguided. He felt I would be ignoring what was most important about the Hernandez case. And in a sense he was right. I was looking for the fashionable angle in Boy’s story, a designer’s life after prison.

  “Just remember,” he warned at the end of our meeting. “Whatever you write, now or a year from now, is going to be looked at by them. And a man’s life hangs in the balance. So it’d better be worth it.”

  I still hadn’t reached out to Boy directly. He had been moved to Camp Iguana, about a kilometer from Camp Delta, where non-enemy combatants were held while the United States negotiated for their release. This was a process that could take several months, even years. For instance, many Yemenis and Uighurs were stuck there indefinitely because of the political climate in their home countries. The State Department had to find hosts that would take them. Even though Iguana was lax by comparison to the other camps, a letter sent to Boy there would still need to pass inspection. I didn’t want to endanger his release, considering the conditions of the gag order. And so I held off on any contact with him until he was home safe in the Philippines.

  Boy spent eight weeks in Iguana, a short span considering how long the others were kept waiting. In Iguana the detainees wore white uniforms and lived together in communal cells. Many of them spoke English, having learned it from years spent in captivity. The camaraderie Boy experienced there was life changing, and he made many lasting friendships. He shared a cell with Abu Omar and Hassan Khaliq, two journalists from Islamabad who had been arrested by the Pakistani authorities. They had each been critical of the Pakistani government and wrote about it regularly. Boy also shared the cell with Shafiq Raza and Moazzam Mu’allim, who’d been captured in Afghanistan and sold for bounties of two thousand dollars. Each of these men had served three to five years in Guantánamo Bay before they were determined to be non-enemy combatants.

  On February 17, 2007, when Boy stepped off the plane in Manila at Ninoy Aquino International, he received a presidential homecoming. The airport had laid out a red carpet for his return and set up barricades along the length of the runway for the hundreds of journalists from all over the world. The flash photography alone was overwhelming. He was met by his mother, who was accompanied by Ted Catallano. Boy’s father had passed away earlier that year of stomach cancer. Ben Laden was there, standing alongside hundreds of extended family members on the tarmac to welcome him home. It was an emotional reunion for Boy. He walked arm in arm with his mother down the length of the red carpet, smiling and waving. Reporters shouted questions at him but he merely answered, “Thank you for coming.” It was incredibly humid that night, and by the end of the carpet Boy looked as if he were going to collapse. Catallano and Laden helped Boy’s mother carry him into the terminal. The headline the next day in the Philippine Examiner read MANILA’S BOY

  RETURNS.

  I sent an e‑mail to Boy after his release, mentioning that I had been following his case from the day he was seized. “It’s a gross injustice what has happened, and it makes me ashamed,” I wrote. I expressed my deepest sympathy and let him know that if there was anything he needed from me, personally or professionally, he should not hesitate to ask.

  My e‑mail went unanswered.

  Weeks later I received a letter under the guise of a pseudonym, a Ms. Ellie Nargelbach. It was an anagram for Gabrielle Chanel.

  Dear Gil,

  It would please me greatly to meet with you, but as you probably already know, I am under strict orders to keep as quiet as a mouse. A travesty inhumaine! For now my dear friend, I leave you with the idea of coming to Manila to cover the opening of the new Balenciaga store in Makati next month. There’s a wonderful café nearby with a man-made pond and a gondola. Listening to an opera over an espresso dopio, two can pretend they are in Milano watching all the tight asses. Just follow the sounds of Puccini to the northwest corridor of the plaza. The café is adjacent to Bubba Gump Shrimp.

  Yours Truly,

  Ellie Nargelbach

  In my reply to Ellie Nargelbach I informed her that I would attend the Balenciaga opening the following month, only my letter was returned to me two weeks later. It was not an issue. I had already bought a ticket to Manila.

  The journey from New York was nearly twenty-four hours. I transferred in Narita to an Egyptian airline. Flying coach on the connecting flight, I had little legroom, and after about half an hour my legs began to cramp. For the first time I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Boy during his detention. I had read that detainees were placed into stressful positions for the duration of their transport; they were chained low to the ground with blackout goggles and headphones, deprived of their perceptive senses. I then tried to picture Boy in his cell, the man I remembered. I decided that I wouldn’t have made it. As a test, I tried to remain in my seat while my legs went numb. But this alone was too much for me, and I had to excuse myself in order to stand up. One cannot simulate the conditions he had to endure. Boy coming out on the other end, not just alive but living a life somewhere, was a tremendous example of human endurance.

  It was early evening when he appeared at the rendezvous point. Café Italia was just as he had described it, on the edge of a man-made pond in a high-end shopping plaza. There was a dark Filipino man in pinstripe and a straw
boater hat wading in a gondola. An opera, not Puccini, played through a set of speakers hidden in a palm tree high above the courtyard. I had arrived at the café early that afternoon, since he hadn’t specified a time in his one and only letter as Ellie Nargelbach.

  It was not easy to recognize him at first. He was remarkably light skinned, pale in complexion, and wearing a white A‑line skirt and navy blouse that looked to be Vivienne Cho. He had on a pair of Chanel flats, and his legs were freshly shaven. His face was masked behind oval vintage sunglasses, and a shoulder-length black wig with bangs covered his forehead. He looked like a sixties movie star. But what gave him away was the Marc Jacobs carryall. This was actually a men’s item, a very expensive men’s item, which I recognized.

  He approached my table and put out his hand. “Ellie Nargelbach,” he said, casually. “So glad you could make it.”

  I was already on my feet and took his hand. Was this Boy’s latest incarnation or a paranoid precaution? I must admit it was hard to tell. I decided I would play along. “It’s nice to finally see you,” I said. “Would you care to join me?”

  “I’d love to. But I can’t stay long.”

  “Please, sit.”

  “Do you have a Kleenex?”

  “I have a napkin.”

  “That’ll do.” Boy took the napkin and wiped his seat clean before sitting. He looked around the plaza, at the shoppers who circled with large shopping bags from Gucci and Louis Vuitton, then glanced across the pond at the man in the gondola.

  “I’m sorry, can I have another napkin?” he asked. Boy patted each of his eyes underneath his sunglasses. “I can’t help it.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “I’m allergic to this place. The pollution. The smog. My skin is hideous.”

  “You look fine.”

  “Thank you, you’re too kind.”

  He told me he had been suffering from insomnia as of late. Even the sleeping pills that he now took regularly would only put him out for two to three hours. Last week he had been awake for three consecutive days and had even considered having himself committed.