Met Pays Protesters £85k Damages

Scotland Yard has paid £85,000 damages to five protesters for assault and false imprisonment, following a protest outside a London embassy.

A letter of apology has been written from the Metropolitan Police to the protesters who had been demonstrating outside the Mexican embassy in London in 2006.

The five received £85,000 in compensation, plus costs, together totalling more than £100,000, in a settlement recorded at the high court this week.

The Met admitted any force used to arrest them was "assault and battery", and their detention was "unlawful". The police force also accepted a restriction of their "democratic right to peaceful protest".

A Met spokesman confirmed the force had settled the claim and the incident was due to a "breakdown in communication".

The spokesman said: "There was a breakdown in communication between two locally based officers leading to the unlawful arrest of five individuals.

"As the MPS accepts that the arrests in these cases were unlawful, any force used to enact this arrest is classed as assault.

"This is the reason for the acceptance of this further element of the claim."

He added no action had been taken against the officers involved because it was an "individual error".

The peaceful rally outside the Mexican embassy in October 2006 was attended by about 20 activists calling for action over the murder of an American filmmaker, Bradley Roland Will, during a teachers' strike in the city of Oaxaca. The shooting was blamed on local state officials.

The news raises hopes that the G20 demonstrators could possibly take similar action.

Yesterday Tony Murphy, the solicitor at Bhatt Murphy, who brought the claim, told Channel 4 news: "This case concerned five protesters, the G20 involved hundreds if not thousands of protesters... a large number of whom, that we are seeing, who had their freedoms interfered with."

If successful legal action is taken by G20 demonstrators, the force could face a bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds, he said.

Mr Murphy, who represents the protesters, went on: "What this case shows is that the cost of policing protest unlawfully is extremely high not just in terms of the human cost to protesters, but also the cost to the public purse and the cost of public confidence in the police."

(JM/BMcc)