UK plan to transfer Chagos Islands goes ahead despite last-minute legal injunction

By Rob Picheta, CNN

London (CNN) — The British government has handed control of the strategically significant Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after the controversial move survived an eleventh-hour legal challenge and months of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed on Thursday that the islands will return to the African country, closing Britain’s last colonial outpost on the continent while maintaining control of the US-UK Diego Garcia military base.

It comes after a High Court judge briefly blocked the transfer, following a challenge by two Chagossian women living in Britain who had opposed the deal on human rights grounds.

And it follows month of criticism, including from allies of Starmer and US President Donald Trump, over the development, which gives control of the land surrounding a key US military location to a close trading partner of China.

Starmer told reporters on Thursday that Diego Garcia is “one of the most significant contributions that we make to our security relationship with the United States.”

“President Trump has welcomed the deal, along with other allies, because they see the strategic importance of this base and that we cannot cede the ground to others who would seek to do us harm,” he said.

Starmer framed the move as a long-awaited solution to a colonial-era arrangement that had posed an ethical and legal dilemma. But the UK’s negotiations with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands have been convoluted and controversial, right up until the hours before they were agreed.

London is expected to pay billions of pounds to close the deal, and Mauritius is heavily reliant on imports from China, which has raised national security concerns on both sides of the Atlantic.

“If Mauritius took us to court again, which they certainly would have, the UK’s longstanding legal view is that we would not have a realistic prospect of success and would likely face provisional measures orders within a matter of weeks,” Starmer said.

He added that he has “no alternative but to act in Britain’s national interest.”

“If we did not agree this deal the legal situation would mean that we would not be able to prevent China or any other nation setting up their own bases on the outer islands or carrying out joint exercises near our base,” Starmer said. “We would have to explain to you, the British people and to our allies, that we’d lost control of this vital asset.”

But Grant Shapps, a former Conservative defense minister, told CNN earlier this year that the plan was “insane.”

“(China) will use territory to expand their influence. They will spy,” Shapps told CNN. “A lot of sensitive stuff goes on at British military bases. So you don’t want to be surrounded by potential adversaries.”

Critics of the deal were given unlikely hope just hours before it was set to be completed, with the temporary injunction leaving plans in the balance.

Bernadette Dugasse and Bertrice Pompe, who brought the legal challenge, have criticized the government for negotiating on the future of the islands without consulting the exiled Chagossian community, which itself has a fraught history with Mauritius.

“We have rights. We are British citizens, yet our right doesn’t count?” Pompe said outside the High Court Thursday after her case was concluded, according to PA Media.

“We don’t want to give our rights, hand over our rights to Mauritius. We’re not Mauritians, and I don’t think we will get any… the rights we’re asking for now we’ve been fighting for for 60 years,” she said.

Britain has controlled the region since 1814, and in 1965 it split the Chagos Islands from Mauritius before that former colony became independent. London kept control of the archipelago and renamed it as the British Indian Ocean Territory.

It then evicted almost 2,000 residents to Mauritius and the Seychelles to create space for an airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia, which it leased to the United States. The secretive base is important to Washington’s interests, giving it a significant military presence in the Indian Ocean.

But its future was thrown into uncertainty in 2019, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Britain should return the islands “as rapidly as possible,” so that they could be decolonized in “a manner consistent with the right of peoples to self-determination.” That ruling was advisory, but it was endorsed overwhelmingly by the United Nations General Assembly.

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