WASHINGTON, April 2 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Supreme Court refuses on Monday to consider two appeals by prisoners at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, over their confinement there for over five years.

    The appeals sought to overturn a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington in February that upheld a key provision of a law enacted last year.

    The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said civilian courts in the United States no longer had the authority to consider whether the military was illegally holding the prisoners, as a law passed by Congress in 2006 took away the rights of the prisoners to bring such cases and that hundreds of their lawsuits must be dismissed.

    In its ruling, the Supreme Court said it would consider on the constitutionality of part of an anti-terrorism law signed by President George W. Bush last October. The law stripped the right off the 385 prisoners at Guantanamo to challenge their detentions by the U.S. military.

    The Supreme Court rejected two times in the past the Bush administration's position that Guantanamo prisoners could not sue in U.S. courts.

    The United States opened the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo in January 2002, to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Most of those still being held there have been detained for about five years and only about 10 have been charged.