London, Oct. 22: The residents of the idyllic Indian Ocean islands in the Diego Garcia atoll, 1,000 miles from the southern tip of India, were today given the bad news by Britain’s Law Lords – they cannot return home, even to lay flowers at the graves of their ancestors, because American B-52 bombers are now roaring down the runway of what has become a US military base.

Diego Garcia was used by American B-52 bombers during the Iraq wars – American planes have occasionally used Indian air space.

It is also known that the island can be used as a launch pad for nuclear weapons.

The High Court and the Court of Appeal had earlier backed the Chagossians, as the islanders are called, but today in a curiously-worded judgment that reeks of behind the scenes political pressure, the Law Lords, Britain’s equivalent of a Supreme Court, ruled the British government had the right to throw out the inhabitants of Diego Garcia if this was held to be in the interests of its security.

The Law Lords ruled in the government’s favour by a 3-2 majority but many still view the expulsion of the Chagossians as one of the worst breaches of human rights committed by a British government in the last century.

Speaking earlier this year at the launch of a blueprint for the Chagossians’ return, Richard Gifford, lawyer for the islanders, said their “expulsion” had “no parallel in modern times”.

Gifford said: “If Gordon Brown seems slow to criticise the Chinese leadership for their human rights abuses in Tibet, perhaps he is worried by the mote in his own eye. For might he not be charged with the reproach that the treatment of the Chagos islanders is a crime against humanity?”

Today, Gifford said: “It has been the misfortune of the Chagos islanders that their passionate desire to return to their homeland has been caught up in the power politics of foreign policy for the past 40 years.”

He commented: “Sadly, their struggle to regain their paradise lost has been dismissed on legal grounds, but the political possibilities remain open for Parliament, the British public and the international community to continue to support.”

John Pilger, the campaigning journalist who has backed the Chagos Islanders’ fight to return home, gave his angry view: “This was a political decision today. How could it be otherwise when the highest court in this country has found in favour of the most flagrant injustice, certainly in my lifetime?”

He said the judgment upheld an “immoral and illegal” act.

Even David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, while welcoming today’s victory, appeared embarrassed.

He said: “It is appropriate on this day that I should repeat the government's regret at the way the resettlement of the Chagossians was carried out in the 1960s and 1970s and at the hardship that followed for some of them. We do not seek to justify those actions and do not seek to excuse the conduct of an earlier generation.”

A spokesman for the Chagos Islanders recalled: “Forty years ago, in December 1966, the Harold Wilson Labour government gave away our homeland, including Diego Garcia, which has been given to the US government to use as a military base.”

He added: “The whole Chagossian population was forcibly removed from our homes, our animals were killed and we were dumped, mainly in the slums of Mauritius. We have been treated like slaves.”

Lawyers for the Chagossians had cited the 29th chapter of Magna Carta, the document which underpins everything that makes Britain possibly still the most civilised country in the world: “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned... or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed ... but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”

But Lord Hoffmann, who backed the government, said the right of abode was a “creature of the law”.

“The law gives it and the law may take it away,” he declared.

His view, effectively, was that might was right.

He rejected arguments by the Chagossians' lawyers that the Crown did not have the power to remove their right of abode in what is now known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

He said Her Majesty in Council was entitled to legislate for a colony in the interests of the United Kingdom.

The history of the dispute is that nearly 2,000 residents were forced out of the Chagos Islands when the British colony was leased to the US in the 1960s to build an airbase on the atoll of Diego Garcia.

The courts ruled in 2000 that the Chagossians could return to 65 of the islands, but not Diego Garcia. In 2004, the government used the royal prerogative to nullify the rulings, but this was overturned by the High Court and Court of Appeal.

In June this year, the Government went to the House of Lords to argue that allowing the islanders to return would seriously affect defence and security.

Olivier Bancoult, the Chagossian leader who brought the action on behalf of the islanders, said at a press conference today: “I can say we, the Chagossian people, will not give up.”

He called on the British government to “put an end to the shameless victimisation of Chagossians, and adopt a lawful policy of facilitating our return to our homeland”.