Four Britons being held at the Camp Delta detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba will be allowed to challenge their detention in American courts, it was ruled today.
The US Supreme Court made the ruling, paving the way for around 600 Guantanamo inmates to challenge their capture and detention.
But a lawyer for two of the Britons appealed for the British Government to keep up the pressure on Washington for the men to be returned home.
"It's not going to mean my clients get out of Guantanamo Bay in the foreseeable future," said Ms
Louise Christian, who represents Mr Feroz Abbasi and Mr Martin Mubanga.
The Guantanamo detainees are being held indefinitely at the US Naval base in Cuba, after being deemed "enemy combatants". Their ongoing detention has provoked an outcry by human rights groups, but the US Government has insisted Guantanamo is an essential part of the so-called war on terror.
As well as Mr Abbasi, from Croydon, Surrey, and Mr Mubanga from Wembley, north-west London, two other Britons, Mr Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham and Mr Richard Belmar from St John's Wood, north London, are also being held at Guantanamo .
Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi are among six prisoners who have been deemed eligible to face a military tribunal by President George W Bush. Five other Britons who spent up to two years at the base were handed over to British custody in March, and were quickly freed without charge.
Human rights groups said the Supreme Court ruling was a blow for the Bush administration's policy on detainees. Ms Christian said she would be pursuing with her American counterparts the new legal avenue opened up by the Supreme Court ruling. But she said it would not mean the men being returned to the UK in coming months.
"It's not going to mean my clients get out of Guantanamo Bay in the foreseeable future," she said. "The pressure remains on the British Government to return them here."
Ms Christian said any application would probably take more than a year to reach the Supreme Court. She added: "You get access to a lawyer, the right to raise questions about treatment, you don't get the right to a trial. That's very depressing.
"It doesn't mean anything at all immediately. In order to consider any sub-application it's got to go back down to the lower courts. It will take a year to go up to the higher courts."
It was not immediately clear whether any of the Britons at Guantanamo Bay intended to challenge their detention. Appeals for wrongful detention would initially be made at US Federal District Courts.
The Supreme Court ruling was passed by six justices to three and could lead to hundreds of appeals in US courts on behalf of the inmates. Lower US courts had previously ruled that Guantanamo prisoners were beyond US legal jurisdiction, prompting fierce complaints by detainees' lawyers. If such a ruling were upheld, it would have declared Guantanamo Bay a legal no-man's land.
PA