MEXICO CITY -- Nicaragua has been ordered by an international court to pay damages to an indigenous Indian community for allowing foreign loggers to exploit their land, a legal adviser to the Indians said on Tuesday.

In a ruling made on Monday, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights also ordered the Nicaraguan government to recognize and protect the legal rights of the Awas Tingni community to their traditional lands, James Anaya, a law professor at the University of Arizona and adviser to the Indians, said.

The court ordered payment of $50,000 in compensation to the Indian community, which numbers around 650 people, and $30,000 in legal costs.

Anaya, a special counsel to the U.S.-based Indian Law Resource Center, which represented the Awas Tingni community in the case, said the court's ruling had far-reaching implications. The ruling is binding.

"It is precedent-setting internationally ... the significance is that the court recognizes as property indigenous people's customary land tenure, regardless of whether the government recognizes it," Anaya told Reuters.

The Awas Tingni took legal action in 1995 after the Nicaraguan government granted a logging concession to a Korean-owned logging company, Sol del Caribe, on land claimed by the Indians.

The Indians later took the case to the inter-American court after failing to obtain legal redress in Nicaragua.