Starmer’s old legal chambers challenged Chagos Islands’ court; now his Government is backing court diktats

NEWS

One of the last times there was a significant challenge to the Chagos Islands’ Supreme Court was from Prime Minister Keir Starmer's former law firm Doughty Street Chambers in 2024.

Lawyers acting on behalf of Tamil asylum seekers who had landed on the Chagos Islands' military base Diego Garcia successfully argued at the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) Supreme Court that they had been involuntarily detained at the base for three years.

How times change.

Now Prime Minister Keir Starmer is on the other side of the table. Instead of the Prime Minister being with his own former legal chambers defending people with little power, he is attempting to use his Government’s powerful executive diktat to keep Chagossian people off the islands.

This Friday 13 March the case of Misley Mandarin, elected First Minister of the Chagos Government by his group BIOT Citizen, is due to be heard at the BIOT Supreme Court. Mandarin is currently living on the CHAGOS ISLANDS along with his father Michel Mandarin and 4 other Chagossians against BIOT rules. His lawyers will argue that keeping Chagossians off the islands - the people who were living their and then forcibly removed in the 1960s and 1970s including Michel Mandarin - is a crime against humanity.

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Background:

The little known London-based British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) Supreme Court ruled in the Tamils’ favour in 2024. On appeal a year later on 16 December 2025 the BIOT Commissioner failed to overturn the judgement.

The BIOT Commissioner has extraordinary executive powers, which override other parliament-made laws:

“the Commissioner possesses an extraordinary means of tackling those exceptionally challenging circumstances: he has both executive and legislative powers. Whilst any legislation he might enact could be challenged by way of judicial review, it would be not be subject to other judicial or, indeed, Parliamentary scrutiny. Section 10 of the BIOT (Constitution) Order enabled him, as he eventually did, to enact such restrictions that he deemed necessary and proportionate both to safeguard the Claimants and to maintain the security of the sensitive military site.” [Appeal Judgement, paragraph 93]

However in the face of this, Doughty Street lawyers successfully argued that common law principles established in a 1983 legal case limit the government’s power to detain individuals which must be lawful, proportionate, and not indefinite.

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THE CHAGOS FILES TEAM/ 8 MAR 2026/updated 16:35 hours