CHAGOS ISLANDERS have been granted further grounds to judicially review a decision banning them from returning to their homeland.

About 2,300 people were removed from the British-controlled Indian Ocean islands in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for a US air force base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia. In return, Britain got a discount on Polaris nuclear weapons.

Chagos Refugees Group chairman Olivier Bancoult has been battling to win legal redress for decades.