A Dutch court has ruled the government must allow three Congolese witnesses who testified before the International Criminal Court to seek asylum in the Netherlands.

A court in Amsterdam issued the ruling on Wednesday.

The three men have been held for months at the ICC's detention unit in The Hague while lawyers debated whether they can apply for asylum.

They are defense witnesses in the trial of two rebels accused of war crimes in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Dutch government had refused to let the three men have their asylum requests dealt with by regular Dutch procedure, saying they were under ICC jurisdiction.