WASHINGTON, Nov 20: A federal judge on today rejected arguments by a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and refused to stop the US military from performing a medical procedure on the detainee's heart.

District Judge Paul Friedman denied the request by Saifullah Paracha, a 59-year-old Pakistani businessman who is being held at the remote US base in Cuba, to issue an emergency restraining order to stop the cardiac catheterisation scheduled for this week.

“The court finds that the petitioner has not established that he faces irreparable injury from having the procedure performed at Guantanamo Bay,” Friedman wrote in an order.

Paracha, who has US residency, has had two heart attacks and recently suffered chest pains. Doctors at Guantanamo Bay, where some 430 suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are being held, decided he needed to have the procedure. It is due to take place on Tuesday.

Paracha's lawyers filed a motion in court last week, saying the procedure was too risky to be done at the base. They asked the judge to order that the procedure be held at a cardiac catheterization laboratory in the United States or Pakistan.

In papers filed with the court on Friday, the US government said the catheterization was safe because a similar procedure was performed there in 2003.—Reuters