Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev or Elham Battayav (born 7 November 1973) was held in

extrajudicial detention Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

. His Guantanamo

Internment Serial Number An Internment Serial Number (ISN) is an identification number assigned to captives who come under control of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) during armed conflicts. History On March 3, 2006, in compliance with a court order from D ...

was 84. He was born in Abaye,

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. Batayev was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and he was transferred to Kazakhstan on 15 December 2006.

Tom Johnson, Batayev's lawyer

On 9 August 2006 Batayev's lawyer, Tom Johnson, of

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, was profiled by the ''

Willamette Week ''Willamette Week'' (''WW'') is an alternative weekly newspaper and a website published in Portland, Oregon, United States, since 1974. It features reports on local news, politics, sports, business, and culture. History Early history ''Willame ...

''.Distant Justice: How a Portland lawyer is trying to help one Guantánamo detainee return to his life as a fruit trader
, ''

'', 9 August 2006 Johnson remarked on how Batayev continued to keep his hopes up that he would eventually be released.

Habeas corpus submissions

Elham Battayav is one of the sixteen Guantanamo captives whose amalgamated

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

submissions were heard by US District Court Judge

Reggie B. Walton Reggie Barnett Walton (born February 8, 1949) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He is a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Early life ...

on 31 January 2007.

Release

The

law firm Perkins Cole issued a press release on 18 December 2006 announcing Ihlkham Battayav's release. The press release stated: The ''Miami Herald'' reports that three of the four Kazakh detainees in Guantanamo were repatriated and set free on 21 December 2006. According to the Herald the two other released men were Abdullah Tohtasinovich Magrupov and

Yakub Abahanov Yakub or Yaqub ( ar, يعقوب‎, Yaʿqūb or Ya'kūb , links=no, also transliterated in other ways) is a male given name. It is the Arabic version of Jacob and James. The Arabic form ''Ya'qūb/Ya'kūb'' may be direct from the Hebrew or indirect ...

McClatchy News Service interview

On 15 June 2008, the

McClatchy News Service The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states and ...

published a series of article based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives.
mirror
Ilkham Batayev was one of the men they interviewed. mirror
/ref> The McClatchy report stated that Ilkham Batayev said he couldn't bring himself to talk about his Guantanamo experiences, or how he came to be in Afghanistan. But the McClatchy report characterized previous reports Ilkham Batayev had offered earlier—to a journalist in 2001, to his Tribunal, and to his lawyer—as inconsistent. The McClatchy article quoted Ilkham Batayev's lawyer, Thomas R. Johnson Jr., about the credibility of his assertion that fighters in the Uzbekistan Islamic Movement could have kidnapped him, and press-ganged him, into involuntary service in Afghanistan. Johnson thought that the Tribunal officers discounted this part of his story as incredible, because it was outside their experience, and they simply couldn't imagine it was credible, in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Afghanistan:

References

External links

Distant JusticeTajiks released from Guantánamo sentenced to 17 years in prison
Andy Worthington
McClatchy News Service - video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Batayev, Ilkham Turdbyavich Kazakhstani extrajudicial prisoners of the United States Living people Guantanamo detainees known to have been released Prisoners of the Taliban 1973 births