"Liberty has received hundreds of letters, emails and calls from people who were on the May Day demonstration and who feel that they were unfairly treated by the police. Liberty's lawyers have been in contact with other lawyers who also have clients who want to take action and yesterday we met with barristers who are experts in human rights to discuss the best strategy to adopt.

We are considering three possibilities at present: (1) advising people to use the police complaints system to complain about individual officers, including the senior officers who authorized the action; (2) advising people to sue the Metropolitan police for assault or false imprisonment; or (3) testing the lawfulness of the police decisions by seeking a declaration from the High Court in judicial review proceedings.

John Wadham, solicitor and Director of Liberty said today:

"Detaining people for long periods without proper legal authority was unjustified and we are actively investigating the quickest way of resolving this in the courts."

However we are not able to discuss our tactics in greater detail at present but we hope to provide more information about our tactics within the next two weeks."