By Richard Powell BBC News Online

US and British lawyers are heralding the Supreme Court's ruling allowing Guantanamo detainees to contest their captivity in US courts as a major turning point.

Families of Guantanamo detainees are pushing lawyers for support

Steven Watt, a lawyer for the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, is representing more than 60 detainees being held at Guantanamo and has travelled to Yemen to meet some of their families and collect statements.

"When we filed the first petition to the district court in February 2002, we lost and then we lost again in the Court of Appeal, then we won in the Supreme Court," he told BBC News Online.

Now all 595 detainees at Guantanamo are entitled to file the petitions that contest the US's right to hold them without charge, he says.

"The nine petitions filed this week represent just the start. We represent 53 more people in Guantanamo and we'll be filing petitions for all of them in the coming weeks as well as for others afterwards.

"We don't know how the courts will deal with these cases but it will set a legal precedent".

Visiting time

Many detainees were not just picked up in Afghanistan pointing guns at US troops, they were picked up in countries around the world - including in the Gambia, Bosnia and in Georgia, Mr Watt said.

"Some relief workers could even be among the Guantanamo detainees, having been mistakenly picked up in the conflict zone in Afghanistan as combatants," he added.

The court's ruling has certainly got things moving, with the next step being to gain access to his clients.

"We're working on the logistics with US authorities of getting into Guantanamo to actually meet these people," he said.

British lawyer Stephen Jakobi, director of Fair Trials Abroad, hailed the Supreme Court's decision to extend US justice to the prisoners as a major turning point.

"It brings Guantanamo into the mainstream of the US legal system - that means you can make applications for people who are being tried," he told BBC News Online.

"What we've been calling a legal black hole - which these prisoners have been sitting in for so long - has now been filled. We're just trying to work out how best to exploit it," he said.

Tough times

The Bush administration could now be in for a hard time, Mr Jakobi warns.

"The smoke signals coming out of Washington make it obvious the Bush administration has been caught on the hop by the Supreme Court," he said.

"They're talking about holding trials on the mainland and holding them at Guantanamo and releasing people and sending them home," he said.

"They're totally confused. The authorities will have to charge them if they don't let them go. If they're charged we can then determine whether the rules President Bush outlined for their trial can be applied within US courts - it's no longer just a decision for the president and that's key."

Mr Jakobi said he was hopeful for the successful and fair trial of detainees.

"I'm confident it is going to result in some victories and some prisoners being released along the line. I'm far more confident about it now than before when we simply couldn't see where we were going," he said.

"The very public dispute and subsequent stalemate between the UK and US governments has also been resolved - at least on this issue - in favour of the British," he added.