Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev

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Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev is a citizen of Uzbekistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] Batayev's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 084. The Department of Defense reports that Batayev was born on November 7, 1973, in Abaye, Kazakhstan.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 Testimony
2 Administrative Review Board Hearing
3 Tom Johnson, Batayev's lawyer
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a small trailer, the same width, but shorter, than a mobile home. The Tribunal's President sat in the big chair. The detainee sat with their hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor in the white, plastic garden chair. A one way mirror behind the Tribunal President allowed observers to observe clandestinely. In theory the open sessions of the Tribunals were open to the press. Three chairs were reserved for them. In practice the Tribunal only intermittently told the press that Tribunals were being held. And when they did they kept the detainee's identities secret. In practice almost all Tribunals went unobserved.

The caption to this poster, distributed by the CIA in Afghanistan, reads: “You can receive millions of dollars for helping the Anti-Taliban Force catch Al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct a competent tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were lawful combatants -- rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

Batayev chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[2]

[edit] Testimony

Batayev was confused with whether the Tribunal was a court of law, and why he wasn’t being provided with a lawyer.

Batayev told the Tribunal he was not from Uzbekistan, he was from Kazakhstan.

Batayev explained that he had come to Tajikstan to sell apples, and in Tajikistan he was seized by men who sold him to the Taliban. The Taliban didn’t try to employ him as a fighter. They put him to work assisting in a kitchen. He was employed in this fashion for five to six months. When the Americans attacked everyone ran away and he was able to escape.

Batayev was captured the next day by Northern Alliance forces. He was sent to Mazari Sharif, and he described his experience of the uprising there. The group of men he was incarcerated with were being kept in a basement. When they were ordered out he heard shooting. He was injured by a grenade that killed most of the other men he had been with. He and other survivors were trapped for five or six days in the basement. Eventually the Northern Alliance tried burning them out, and then tried flooding them out. When he was well enough to be moved he was sent to Guantanamo.

When his testimony was over the Tribunal President thanked him for his co-operation, and commented on his white uniform.

[edit] Administrative Review Board Hearing

Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".

They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat -- or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.

Batayev chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.^[3]

[edit] Tom Johnson, Batayev's lawyer

On 9 August 2006 Batayev's lawyer, Tom Johnson, of Portland, Oregon, was profiled by the Williamette Week.^[4] Johnson remarked on how Batayev continued to keep his hopes up that he would eventually be released.