Chagos Appeal Court Overturns Ruling, Orders Four Chagossians Expelled

The Appeal Court of the British Indian Ocean Territory has upheld expulsion orders against four Chagossians, including Misley Mandarin, who had been living on Ile du Coin in the Chagos Archipelago. The ruling, handed down on Thursday 12 June 2026, overturns a favourable judgment that the Supreme Court had issued on 31 March of this year.

The Appeal Court found that the first-instance court had erred in its legal reasoning, though the full grounds of the judgment were not published at the time of reporting. The four individuals now face forced removal from the island under the reinstated expulsion orders.

The case sits at the heart of one of the most contested sovereignty disputes in the Indian Ocean. The Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia, was separated from Mauritius by Britain in 1965 and its entire population was forcibly removed by the late 1970s to make way for a joint US-UK military base. The descendants of those displaced people, known as Chagossians or Ilois, have fought for decades to reclaim their right to return.

The British Indian Ocean Territory, known by its acronym BIOT, is administered by the United Kingdom. Its court system operates separately from both Mauritius and the UK domestic courts, though appeals can ultimately reach higher British judicial bodies.

Misley Mandarin is among a small group of Chagossians who physically returned to the outer islands of the archipelago in a bid to assert their right of abode. Ile du Coin is one of the smaller islands in the Peros Banhos atoll, far from Diego Garcia. Their presence there became a legal flashpoint, with the BIOT administration seeking their removal and the Chagossians arguing they had an inherent right to be on their ancestral homeland.

The March 2026 Supreme Court ruling had given the group temporary legal protection by questioning whether the expulsion orders were properly grounded. That protection has now been stripped away by the Appeal Court's decision.

What this means: For Misley Mandarin and the three other affected individuals, the ruling removes their immediate legal shield and places them at risk of physical expulsion from the Chagos islands. More broadly, the decision is a significant setback for the wider Chagossian right-of-return movement. It reinforces the BIOT administration's authority to control who may reside in the archipelago, at a time when the sovereignty of Chagos remains a live and deeply political issue between Mauritius and the United Kingdom. Any further challenge would likely need to be pursued through higher courts or through diplomatic channels as sovereignty negotiations continue.

Source: Le Defi Media