Reply #1: Exiled islanders lose London court fight over US air bases [View All]

[dutchdemocrat]

Exiled islanders lose London court fight over US air bases


Exiled islanders lose London court fight
Thu 9 October, 2003 12:22 BST

LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of Indian Ocean islanders forcibly removed from their homes at the height of the Cold War to make way for a U.S. military base have lost a court fight in Britain for financial compensation and the right to return.

Up to 2,000 people from Britain's Diego Garcia and other islands in the Chagos chain were uprooted from their homes and shipped to the Mauritius islands in the early 1970s after a deal was struck to build an American air base.

Diego Garcia remains a strategic U.S. military base, its airfields and long-range bombers recently called into action for the attack on Iraq that removed Saddam Hussein from power.

In delivering his decision, Justice Duncan Ouseley said there was no legal basis to argue that the islanders had been subjected to "unlawful exile".

He dismissed their calls for financial compensation from the British government but also chastised the government over its treatment of the islanders:

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=385750§ion=news