Ilkham Turdbyavich Batayev or Elham Battayav (born 7 November 1973) was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
Elham Battayav is one of the sixteen Guantanamo captives whose amalgamated habeas corpus submissions were heard by US District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton on 31 January 2007.
The Perkins Coie team of Fortino, Tom Johnson and Cody Weston began representing Battayav, pro bono, in late 2004.
[8] 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.
[8] 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: