The US Supreme Court says it will decide whether foreign nationals can use American courts to challenge their imprisonment at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The justices agreed yesterday to rule on whether US courts have the power to consider challenges by a group of Afghan war detainees to their continued confinement without access to families or lawyers, and with no charges brought against them.
These will be the first cases the court will hear relating to the Bush administration's "war on terror".
The Supreme Court will hear an hour of arguments in March, with a ruling due by July in a pair of cases that could decide the judiciary's role to review certain government's actions in the war on terror.
It agreed to hear appeals by two British, two Australian and 12 Kuwaiti nationals. They are among about 660 detainees from more than 40 nations at the base in Cuba following their capture during the war in Afghanistan.
The detainees were seized during the US-led campaign against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network after the September 11th, 2001, attacks. The first detainees arrived at Guantanamo in January 2002.
US officials defended the government's policies. "We believe that the law is on our side," President Bush's national security adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, said.