LONDON (AP) – Britain’s highest court on Thursday harshly condemned one of the most hotly disputed elements of the country’s anti-terrorist strategy – a law allowing some foreign suspects to be locked up indefinitely with no charge.

The government, however, said 11 suspects in detention under the disputed provision of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act were dangerous and would stay in prison until it decides what to do about the ruling.

Critics had argued that the detentions, some of which have lasted for three years, were a gross human rights violation. In a powerfully worded 8-1 decision, the judges agreed, saying the law is disproportionate and discriminates against immigrants and foreigners.

“Nothing could be more antithetical to the instincts and traditions of the people of the United Kingdom” than indefinite detentions without charge or trial, wrote Lord Hoffman, one of a nine-judge panel in the House of Lords.

While the Law Lords panel, Britain’s highest court, cannot strike down the disputed provision of the act, the ruling that it is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights puts pressure on the government to resolve that conflict by repealing or amending the clause.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the 11 detainees would remain imprisoned and the law would stay in force for now.

He said the suspects were a threat to Britain’s security but that officials would consider changing the law in light of the ruling.

“It is ultimately for Parliament to decide whether and how we should amend the law,” he said. In practical terms, however, it’s a decision for a government that commands a lopsided majority in the House of Commons.

U.S. courts have also made some decisions reining in the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism strategy, which envisaged detaining so-called “enemy combatants” without charge or trial.

But the British court decision seems to go further than a ruling earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that foreigners seized by U.S. forces as potential terrorists and held for several years may challenge their captivity in American courts.

While the June 2004 ruling does not guarantee detainees a trial, it did reject a central claim of the Bush administration: that the government has authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny access to courts or lawyers while interrogating them.

Since that ruling, lawsuits have been filed in federal court in Washington on behalf of dozens of people being held at a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. About 550 prisoners are being detained, accused of links to the Taliban or the al-Qaida terror network.

The British detentions have been a focus of intense criticism since the law was enacted shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Human rights advocates dubbed Belmarsh prison, where many of the suspects are held, “Britain’s Guantanamo.”

A group of psychiatrists said in October that many of the suspects in Britain had suffered severe mental health problems because of their indefinite imprisonment.

“Internment has been a festering sore on our nation’s conscience for nearly three years,” said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, one of many human rights groups that praised the Lords’ verdict and urged the government to change the law and charge or release the prisoners.

The British government has argued that the detentions were a tough but necessary measure to protect a free society from devastating attacks.

Seventeen people have been held under the powers. Eleven remain in custody and six have been freed, deported or detained under other authority.

The law applies only to terror suspects who are not British citizens and whose lives would be endangered if they were deported to their home countries.

It allows police to arrest and hold those foreigners if there are “reasonable grounds to suspect” links to terrorist groups. That is a far lower requirement than the standard of proof that would be required to convict them of a crime.

The suspects are not allowed to hear all the evidence against them, nor can their lawyers see all the top-secret documents and testimony. Few suspects have been publicly identified.

While recognizing the dangers posed by terrorism, the judges ruled it was discriminatory to deprive foreign suspects without good reason of basic rights afforded to Britons.

“This ruling should send a message to the legislators that ‘national security’ can never take precedence over human rights,” one of the detainees, identified only as “A,” said through his lawyer, Gareth Peirce.

Hoffman, calling the case one of the most important to come before the lords in years, wrote that the European convention enshrined “a quintessentially British liberty,” defended here in World War II while neighboring nations imprisoned people at will.

“The question in this case is whether the United Kingdom should be a country in which the police can come to such a person’s house and take him away to be detained indefinitely without trial,” he wrote.