Olivier Bancoult in front of a map of Diego Garcia

Law lords hold key to islanders' dream of return to paradise

Legal challenge may end 40 years of exile from Diego Garcia

It was the British government that banished Theoseph and a few thousand other Chagossians from their homes 40 years ago and dispatched them to the newly independent Mauritius, giving the main island, Diego Garcia, to the US as a base as part of a cold war deal.

A different branch of the imperial power, the House of Lords, will decide next month whether they will be allowed to return, a move resisted by the British government in spite of a succession of legal judgments in the islanders' favour

who were overjoyed when the then foreign secretary Robin Cook agreed to allow their return in 2000, only for the September 11 attacks on the US to give the islands a new strategic importance as a staging point for operations against Iraq and Afghanistan

US has been accused of using the base for the rendition of prisoners