Washington, June 28 (Reuters): The US Supreme Court placed the first limits on President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism yesterday when it ruled that terror suspects can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement.

The rulings, the first the court has made on Bush’s anti-terrorism policies, marked a defeat for the President’s assertion of sweeping powers to indefinitely hold “enemy combatants” after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In one ruling, the court said the nearly 600 foreign terror suspects held for two years at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba could turn to American courts to challenge their confinement. In another ruling, it said an American terror suspect held in his nation is entitled to a chance to contest the government's decision.

“Today’s historic rulings are a strong repudiation of the administration’s argument that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law and unreviewable by American courts,” Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said.

A US defence official said the Pentagon would examine the rulings to see how to “modify existing procedures”, but he put the best face on the court’s action, saying it was “important in that it affirms the President’s authority to detain enemy combatants in the global war on terrorism.”

By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled American courts can consider the claims of Guantanamo Bay prisoners — suspected al Qaida members or Taliban fighters — who said in their lawsuits they were being held illegally in violation of their rights.

“What is presently at stake is only whether the federal courts have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the executive’s potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

The ruling did not address the merits of the claims, and the detainees still could face a long legal battle to win their release or major changes in the conditions of their confinement. But families of some Guantanamo Bay detainees and their lawyers said in London the ruling could mean the beginning of the end of the prison camp.

And lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case to the higher court, said they would seek access to their clients within the week.

In the second ruling, the court divided by a 5-4 vote to rule that Bush has the power to detain American citizen Yaser Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan as a suspected Taliban fighter and who has been held in a US military jail. It said the US Congress authorised the detention of combatants in the narrow circumstances alleged in the case.

But in the more important part of the ruling, the justices by an 8-1 vote ruled he should get a fair opportunity to rebut the government’s case for detaining him. The opinion written by Justice Sandra Day ’Connor said constitutional due process rights demand that a citizen held in the US as an enemy combatant must be given “a meaningful opportunity” to contest the detention before a neutral party.