From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (30 page)

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:

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 authority 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.

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.