A US court has ordered the immediate release of 17 Chinese Uighurs who have been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, in a landmark decision that deals another blow to the Bush administration’s detainee policy.

In the first court ruling to release prisoners from Guan-tánamo, Judge Richard Urbina said the Uighurs – Muslim Chinese from north-western Xinjiang province – posed no security risk to the US. He said the US constitution did not allow the Pentagon to hold the men indefinitely.