The people of the Chagos islands who were forcibly removed from their homeland by Britain to pave the way for the huge American military base on the island of Diego Garcia, have won yet another victory in the British courts to return home. But will the Americans allow the British to respect their

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It's a landmark judgment, a jubilant Olivier Bancoult, 43, told New African eight days after the Chagossians' comprehensive victory against the British government in the Court of Appeal on 23 May.

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"Even though we are a small people, we have succeeded against a great power that has banished us from our motherland for 40 years," Bancoult said. "It gives hope to all displaced peoples throughout the world that they too will be able to return home if they carry on their struggles."

The Chagossians' ancestors had been transported by the French as slaves from Senegal and Mozambique to the archipelago in the late 18th century to work on the coconut plantations in the Indian Ocean.

The islands changed from French to British control in 1815 during the Napoleonic Wars and an additional wave of indentured migrant labourers from south India were brought to the islands when slavery was abolished. The two groups intermarried and over time created a distinctive Creole society and culture on the islands.

The Bancoult family lived on Peros Banhos, one of the larger islands in the Chagos group. Like their compatriots they enjoyed a simple and carefree existence. "I was only four when I left so I cannot remember that much," says Bancoult. "But according to what my parents have told me, everything was very wonderful--everyone had their own house and everyone had a job. After work people would go fishing and share what they had caught. It was like living in one big family." The struggle to return to their homeland after their forced removal by the British government in the early 1970s to pave the way for a huge American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest and most populous of the islands in the Chagos group, has taken many twists and turns.

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The matter lay legally dormant until 1997 when Bancoult, who had by now established the Chagos Refugee Group, was approached by the London-based lawyer, Richard Gifford. Bancoult takes up the story: "He advised us that we had a chance to make a case against the British government and challenge the immigration ordnance [issued in 1971] which was stopping us going back to Chagos. And for the first time we were also able to access legal documents that had been declassified and with that sort of evidence giving strength to our cause, we were on our way."

In November 2000, Bancoult won a spectacular victory in the High Court which quashed the order excluding the Chagossians from their homeland. After some hesitation, the then foreign secretary, the late Robin Cook, the principal architect of the Labour governments then "ethical foreign policy", stated: "The government will not be appealing."

Conspicuously, he declined to defend "what was done or said 30 years ago". Cook had great sympathy for the plight of the Chagossians and arranged for them to be given British citizenship in 2002.

Interestingly, Cook was moved from his position as foreign secretary the following year, and his successor, Jack Straw, a lawyer by profession and a man much more sensitive to American anxieties (which had increased significantly after 9/11) than his predecessor, issued an "order in council" under the royal prerogative in 2004--a tactic which cleverly avoided any parliamentary scrutiny--that no person had a "right of abode" in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Straw, who is now the leader of the House of Commons, was blunt in his assessment of the Chagossians' chances of returning to their homeland. "As long as there is a need for security, I don't see how they can go back," he stated. The latest legal round between Bancoult and the British government began at the Court of Appeal on 5 February this year. The current British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, applied to overturn a second High Court ruling in May 2006 in which two judges memorably described the exile of the Chagossians--"a whole population"--as both "irrational" and "repugnant".

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In the latest case, the government's QC, John Howell, argued before a panel of three senior judges, including the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, that under the 1865 Colonial Laws Validity Act, the last judgment issued in the High Court was legally flawed because it represented a "revolutionary" legal change that would affect "the constitutional relationship between this country and British overseas territories", especially the Queen's capacity to legislate in such a way that promoted "the interests of the UK and in particular its defence and security". With other legal arguments already found wanting in the lower courts, this was definitely a high-risk strategy on the part of the British governments legal team.

Olivier Bancoult was once again represented by the veteran 84-year-old and razor-sharp, South African-born, Sir Sydney Kentridge, an acknowledged expert on British Commonwealth law. Sir Sydney pulled no punches in court arguing that the orders in council were "beyond the prerogative powers of the Queen".

He went on: "The crown's prerogative has never included the power to remove or exclude British subjects from the territory to which they belong, let alone a whole population of British subjects" and certainly not for the purposes of "the defence interests of the United States or the United Kingdom".

Sir Sydney got to the very heart of the matter when he declared that the removal of the Chagossians from "their right of abode" without any consultation with the people themselves, their representatives and in the absence of parliamentary scrutiny "was a decision so outrageous in defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person would have arrived at it".

The judges unanimously agreed, and on 23 May stated that the British government had undoubtedly abused its power in evicting the Chagossians four decades ago. They added that the subsequent use of "orders in council" was also unlawful and constituted "an abuse of power".

The Chagossians were duly informed that they were now free to return home. "Freedom to return to one's homeland, however poor and barren the conditions of life," read the decision, is "one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings."

Lord Justice Sedley, giving the lead ruling, wrote: "Few things are more important to a social group than a sense of belonging, not only to each other but to a place. What sustained peoples in exile, from Babylon onwards, has been the possibility of one day returning home."

Crucially, he added: "While a natural or man-made disaster could warrant the temporary, perhaps even indefinite, removal of a population for its own safety and so rank as an act of governance, the permanent exclusion of an entire population from its homeland for reasons unconnected with their collective wellbeing cannot have that character and accordingly cannot be lawfully accomplished by use of the prerogative power of governance."

The judges refused a stay on the effect of their judgment which, theoretically, allows the Chagossians to return home as soon as they are able. Costs were awarded against the government and permission was refused to take the case to the House of Lords, the highest court in the land, although a direct petition to the Law Lords by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office remains a distinct possibility.

Says Bancoult: "Time is very dear to us and that is why we want a quick solution. Many of our people are quite old now and if it's left very much longer, they will have passed away before they get to the motherland. After all they have been through that would be very wrong. That cannot be allowed to happen."