London ? An Australian being held at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay won a court battle Tuesday to be registered as a British citizen, a step he hopes will secure his release.

David Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner and Muslim convert from the southern city of Adelaide, was caught in Afghanistan in December 2001, allegedly fighting with the ousted Taliban regime. His mother was born in Britain, and he sought British citizenship in the hopes that Britain would take up his case with Washington as it did for nine other Britons who were released from the camp on the eastern tip of Cuba.

Last month, the British Home Office rejected Hicks’ application for British citizenship on character grounds, but his lawyers appealed the decision.

On Tuesday, Justice Andrew Collins ruled that Home Secretary Charles Clarke had no power to reject Hicks’ citizenship application.