WASHINGTON, March 11: A US appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a challenge by Afghan war detainees, including two Britons and two Australians at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, to their being held without access to their family or a lawyer.

The unanimous three-judge panel ruled US courts lack jurisdiction to hear the challenges that also were brought on behalf of 12 Kuwaitis. All 16 detainees are being held at the base after their capture during the war in Afghanistan.

“They cannot seek release based on violations of the Constitution or treaties or federal law; the courts are not open to them,” Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote in the 18-page ruling.

Lawyers representing the foreign nationals argued the US Constitution and international law forbade indefinite detention without providing the prisoners certain protections.

The appeals court upheld a ruling by US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in dismissing the three lawsuits. She said the military base was outside the sovereign territory of the United States and that writs of habeas corpus were unavailable to aliens held outside US

The US Justice Department said the more than 600 people being held at Guantanamo Bay are “enemy combatants” who have no rights under the US legal system. —Reuters