The US Defence Department must release the identities of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a news agency, a judge has ruled.

US FEDERAL courts dealt a double blow to the Bush administration’s strategy in the war on terror yesterday, ruling that the US military cannot deny prisoners access to lawyers or the American courts by detaining them indefinitely.

Two black men convicted in connection with the killing of a Jewish scholar during 1991 riots in a New York City neighbourhood have won a trial from a federal appeals court.