Away from the surfing, white beaches and luxury hotels of Mauritian tourism, these people now live in corrugated iron shacks. Victims of history, they were simply in the way and were dumped. Those who had travelled from the Chagos islands to Mauritius for a holiday, to visit relatives or seek medical care during those years were bluntly told they could not return home. Others were packed in ships with one small trunk per family and promises that housing, jobs and social welfare awaited them: they arrived to find nothing had been done and for 35 years responsibility for their welfare has been batted between Britain and Mauritius.

But one of the Ilois, Olivier Bancoult, is about to take a stand for his community. On July 17, in the High Court in London, he will fight for the right of the community to return to their homeland. This poorly paid electrician is taking his struggle to the highest powers, to seek justice from the British, for its inhumane treatment of his people. As a citizen of the British Indian Ocean Territory, he has been given British legal aid and the services of a high-powered legal team as he goes up against the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

'As the leader of the Ilois, I am fighting for our fundamental right to return home. We all had jobs there, food was plentiful and life was good. Here there is high unemployment among the community, and many have found bad habits that did not exist on Chagos. There are problems with hard drugs and alcohol,' Bancoult, 36, says. He lives in Cassis, a slum in the Mauritian capital, Port Louis, along with many other Ilois, who now number around 5,000. For 18 years he has worked as a volunteer social worker for his community, trying to help with problems of drug addiction, huge debts, depression and unemployment.

In 1965, the Ilois was a simple community based on Diego Garcia, the Salomon islands and the Peros Banhos islands - all part of the Chagos Archipelago. They lived on fish and coconuts; the coconuts also provided them with their livelihood from the copra factory based on Diego Garcia. Rita Elysee, 74, who now lives in Cassis, remembers those golden days. 'I came from Peros Banhos and life was good. Food was plentiful and there was harmony between the people. It was like living in one big family. We didn't need much money, we had fish, coconuts, sugar and oil, and everyone had work there. If given the opportunity I would return now, as soon as possible.' Lisette Talate, 59, a native of Diego Garcia, recalls: 'Every day we got up when the bell rang and we had to go to work. As soon as children were 11 or 12 they could start work. The people came from different places in Diego Garcia but every Saturday we would meet up for dancing and a feast.' 'If someone got out of hand on a Saturday,' said Louis, who was then foreman at the factory, and commander on the island, 'I would put them in the jail for the night to cool off.' They were a cohesive community that had churches, a graveyard, a jail and housing. Generations of Ilois were born, got married, had children and died on Chagos and there are certificates to prove it.

But the Pentagon told Britain the islands would have to be 'swept clean' of people - and that was when the lies began. Britain told the outside world the Ilois were contract workers from Mauritius and the Seychelles, and instructions from the Foreign Office were given on how to convince the London press that everything was fine and that these people would be just sent 'home' to the Seychelles and Mauritius. In a top secret telegram sent on November 10, 1965, by the Foreign Office to the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York, instructions were given on how to answer journalists' questions. '... we know a few were born on Diego Garcia and perhaps some of the other Islands and so were their parents before them. We cannot therefore assert there are no permanent inhabitants, however much this would have been to our advantage. In these circumstances we think it would be best to avoid all references to 'permanent inhabitants'.' Officials were then advised to use 'the following in answer to questions by the press in London: The total population in all the islands numbers only about 1,500 persons who, apart from a few officials and estate managers, consist of labourers from Mauritius and Seychelles employed on copra estates, guano extraction, and the turtle industry together with their dependents'. So the Ilois had to be wrenched from everything they knew, and simply made to disappear.

There was another major problem for the British if anyone found out these people were permanent inhabitants. As part of an agreement that Mauritius disputes, the islands had been detached from Mauritius in 1965, to allow for Mauritian independence from Britain, but London was deeply concerned about other countries' rights on British territory elsewhere. The telegram said: 'We recognise we are in a difficult position as regards references to people at present on the detached islands since we ... do not wish to give an argument to the Argentine over the Falkland Islands and also to some extent to Spain over Gibraltar.' The 1950s and 60s saw moves for decolonisation in Africa, the Middle East and Mauritius. The Soviet Union and the West were fighting for hegemony as Britain struggled with Egypt's Nassar over Suez, Aden was lost, and Britain's once glorious empire was down to a few islands as the once world-dominant power now took its orders from the Pentagon.

At that time, the only base the British had in the Indian Ocean was on Gan in the Maldives. Diego Garcia would provide the Americans and British with a central position between Africa, India, Indonesia and Australia.

Many of the Ilois were illiterate and trusting, so it wasn't difficult to convince them to go. First the American surveyors arrived on Diego Garcia in 1964. They were welcomed by the Ilois. Talate recalls: 'I remember the Americans coming in 1964 and some of us like the commander of the island, Raphael Louis, worked together with the Americans. We didn't know why they were there but in World War II there were also British soldiers who came to protect the island, so we thought maybe there is a war somewhere in the world and they are here to protect us again.' Then the removals began. Bancoult was just four years old and had travelled to Mauritius with his family, because his 18-month-old sister, Noellie, needed urgent medical treatment after her legs were run over by the wheel of a cart. She died in Mauritius a month later. When his mother inquired about returning home, she was told she couldn't and stood crying outside the official's door, stranded with nothing.

Meanwhile, Britain bought the copra factory on Diego Garcia for ?1 million from the Seychelles-owned firm Chagos Agalega and shut it down. No jobs meant no money, so the regular ships bringing provisions from Mauritius stopped coming. Jobs were available in Mauritius, they were told. One elderly woman described how over Salomon a plane black against the sun kept circling over them, and frightened people went to pack when they heard that if they didn't leave a bomb would be dropped on them.

When they arrived in Mauritius, the real nightmare began. They were unaccustomed to a cash-based society and the Mauritians were less than welcoming. Suicides and starvation followed. Many of the women now speak of time spent in a mental institution, when they could no longer cope with large families living packed together with no money and ever-increasing debt.

While the women went mad, the men began self-destructing with alcohol and drugs. 'Mauritius gave us no help,' Elysee says. 'I had seven children but four passed away. My husband was paralysed after a heart attack and could not work. I had to work as a maid in five different places to feed the family and get education for the children. I had to take bread from my employers that was four days old and boil it together with sugar because we had no food.' The saga began under a Labour government and could end with one depending on the court hearing, which is expected to last five days. In the interim the Ilois have received two lots of compensation in the 1970s and 1980s of ?650,000 and ?4 million, which was totally inadequate for their housing needs and only paid after protests and hunger strikes and after the first amount was held by the Mauritians for more than five years, so it had lost its value due to inflation.

But Labour politicians were unhappy with the treatment of the Ilois and the way in which the Pentagon appeared to be calling the shots. In 1981, as MP for Edinburgh, Robin Cook criticised the US and Britain for not having respected a promise not to install nuclear weapons on Diego Garcia, on what British politicians claimed to have been told by the Pentagon would be an austere communication station. By 1986, the base would have a 3,650-metre airstrip, long enough for B-52 bombers, and AWACS aircraft to use. The harbour was also dredged sufficiently to accommodate major warships, including submarines. The long-range nuclear weapon-capable and missile-armed B-52s from Diego Garcia were most recently used in September 1996, during operation Southern Watch against Iraq.

In 1984, a Labour Party resolution addressed both the plight of the Ilois and Mauritius' claim of sovereignty over the archipelago and said attention should be given to the possibility of transferring sovereignty to Mauritius, allowing those Ilois who wanted to return to Diego Garcia and the other islands, the chance to go home, and paying additional compensation to those Ilois who wished to stay in Mauritius. Now, as Foreign Secretary, Cook is staying silent on the issue.

British Minister for Foreign Office and Commonwealth Affairs Peter Hain told the South China Morning Post: 'I well understand the wishes of the Mauritian people and the islanders themselves, as does the Labour Party.' At the same time, he said he understood the 'very strong case [for sovereignty] the Mauritian Government has'. But he made it clear that the islands - British territory since 1814 - would remain British until no longer needed for defence purposes.

Mauritian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kailash Purryag says the Mauritian government does not recognise Bancoult's court case. 'The jurisdiction is ours. We don't recognise the British Indian Ocean Territory, and therefore we don't recognise British jurisdiction on this matter.' Bancoult's fight for his community's right to go home has triggered international unease. Why were these people moved off islands 260 km away from the base, when people live on Guam next to the base? Although the Pentagon never comments on nuclear facilities, when India spoke with US President Bill Clinton over concerns of stockpiling on Diego Garcia, he said: 'I understand that.' Americans employ Filipinos on the base shipped in via Singapore and Ilois have always questioned why they were banned from working there.

If Bancoult wins the right to go back, there will also be the issues of setting up the infrastructure of an entire society. He would like to remain British after 'what we have suffered in Mauritius'. But after 35 years, how can a community be rebuilt? Environmentalist Steve Baker, who lives in Hong Kong, has been researching the Chagos issue for seven years. If the Ilois were allowed to go back 'they would need to be advised on how to live on the islands but protect the environment,' he says. The archipelago is one of the last areas in the world with a pristine marine ecosystem.

Studies have been made by renowned botanists such as Britain's David Bellamy. Baker is keen that the Mauritians are not involved as he says they have one of the worst records for illegal fishing and the waters around Mauritius are polluted.

Meanwhile, Bancoult and six other representatives of his community will stand in court and seek justice. On the wall of his house in the Cassis slum, there is a large photograph of Nelson Mandela, given to him for encouragement by his community to fight on. Talking of their suffering, he says: 'What evil did we do, what sins did we commit to deserve this?' Louis hopes to leave the suffering behind him and head back to the sparkling waters of his island.