LONDON - A British court on Wednesday upheld a ruling letting families return to their Indian Ocean island homes, from where they were forced out 30 years ago to make way for a US military base. The Court of Appeal backed a High Court ruling in May last year that allowed the families to return to the Chagos Islands, except for Diego Garcia, a launchpad for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.The British government was expected to seek a final challenge at the highest court in the land, in the House of Lords.
Britain expelled some 2,000 people from the Chagos Islands, 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of the Maldives, to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing it to lease Diego Garcia to Washington for 50 years. Lawyers for the Chagossians had argued in court that, although they cannot live on the main island of Diego Garcia, they should be allowed to return to the other 64 islands of the Chagos archipelago.