Two Maghaberry prisoners have won High Court permission to challenge conditions at the jail.
Harry Fitzsimmons - jailed for abducting and assaulting dissident republican Bobby Tohill - claims he is being subjected to unlawful strip search demands.
The 42-year-old, originally from Spamount Street in north Belfast, is serving an eight year sentence.
He alleges has been ordered to undergo full body searches before being allowed into video-link consultations.
He was part of an IRA gang who kidnapped Tohill at a city centre bar in February 2004, bundling him into a van before police intercepted the abductors.
The legal challenge brought by Fitzsimmons centres on claims that
It is also claimed his refusal to comply has resulted in him facing disciplinary procedures.
Counsel for the Prison Service argued, however, that there was no legal authority for contending body searches cannot be carried out without reasonable suspicions.
David McMillen said: "Again and again the European Court of Human Rights has accepted strip searches may be appropriate if they can be justified as necessary and proportionate.
"They must not be carried out for the purposes of humiliating or degrading a prisoner."
Mr McMillen acknowledged any refusal to allow Fitzsimmons into video-link consultations without undergoing the process should not happen.
But he stressed no such mistakes were being admitted and argued that the prisoner should go down a different legal route.
However, Mr Justice McCloskey granted leave to apply for a judicial review on the basis that an arguable case had been made out on a number of grounds, including the right to privacy.
The case will now proceed to a full hearing in September.
Meanwhile, leave was also granted in another Maghaberry related case - brought by a west Belfast man currently on remand accused in relation to a weapons find.
Stephen Daniel O'Donnell is challenging a rule for prisoners in Roe House, Maghaberry which involves a 23-hour a day lock-down.
His lawyers claim that as well as the one-hour recreation he is permitted, O'Donnell should also have time for consultations to prepare his defence.
Solicitor Ciaran Mulholland said outside court: "Cases of this stature go to show that there are significant problems with the regime currently in place at Maghaberry."
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