Despite being cleared for release and officially declared no threat to the US, five Uighurs held at Guantánamo Bay for eight years had their bid for freedom blocked by the Obama Administration yesterday.

The move came after the Supreme Court agreed with arguments by US government lawyers that the five should not have their appeal to be released into the US heard by the court. It had been due to hear the Uighurs’ appeal on March 23.

America’s highest court, which had been due to hear the Uighurs’ appeal on March 23, reversed course, siding with the White House and refusing to take the case.

The case had been on course to be one of the most important of the Supreme Court’s current term because it would have forced it to decide whether US judges had the right to order foreign prisoners to be released onto US soil, against the wishes of the Government.

Despite President Obama’s troubled effort to shut Guantánamo the Justice Department, like the Bush-era Justice Department before it, argued that Congress and the executive — not the judiciary — had ultimate control over immigration policy and over which foreigners can be released onto US soil.

The decision leaves the five remaining Uighurs at Guantánamo, men who for years have been declared innocent and cleared for release, languishing in the prison at a time when it looks set to remain open for a considerable time. Mr Obama’s pledge to shut it by January this year has run into fierce political and logistical problems in the US.

The Uighurs are from the largely Muslim region of western China, where they are persecuted by China’s dominant ethnic group, the Han. China has demanded the men’s return but both the Bush and Obama administrations have refused amid fears that they would be tortured if sent back.

The original 22 Uighurs held at Guantánamo Bay had fled to Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks. They were picked up in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan after the US-led invasion and sent to Guantánamo.

A judge in Washington ordered the men to be released into the US but that decision was overturned by a federal appeals court. The Uighurs had wanted the Supreme Court to reinstate the original ruling.

In the past year, five Uighurs have been resettled in Albania, four were sent to Bermuda, and six to the Pacific island of Palau. Last month two others accepted an offer to live in Switzerland. The five remaining have been offered a life in Palau but have refused it.

The Supreme Court said because all the remaining Uighurs at Guantánamo had now received offers of resettlement in a third country, the facts of the case had changed. They sent the case back to the original court.

The ruling allowed the White House to avoid arguments aver whether US judges have the power to order Guantánamo prisoners to be released inside the US, something Mr Obama wants to avoid because the political backlash would be fierce.