They could have checked what type of uniform the actors were wearing, what type of guns they had, or even had the common sense to check with the local police."He said Mountain Language had been performed all over the world "without any problems whatsoever".Pinter's witness statement to investigators said: "I was horrified to learn that the Kurds who had been assaulted, handcuffed, arrested, and generally badly treated were forbidden to speak to each other in their own language, even though this is the only language they know."Mountain Language is about people who are persecuted for refusing to stop using their own language.. He said: "The police could have easily made inquiries in a civilised way. Pinter wrote it after a visit with his fellow-playwright Arthur Miller to Kurdish communities in Turkey.After the raid, the refugees told Pinter they had come to Britain because it was a "safe haven". They were released after midnight when police realised their mistake.The payout, £55,000 in damages and an estimated £100,000 legal costs, includes claims for post-traumatic stress disorder. Two of the Kurds had been tortured in Turkey and their treatment by the Met forced them to relive the experiences.Their lawyer, Sadiq Khan, a partner at the London law firm Christian Fisher, said police use of laser-guided telescopic gun sights and the sound of helicopters were particularly traumatic because this was how Turkish security forces raided Kurdish villages.Mountain Language is 25 minutes long and was first performed at the National Theatre in 1988. A police helicopter circled as marksmen moved to surrounding rooftops, and automatic weapons were trained on entrances and exits. After an hour, officers stormed in.The 11 actors were arrested, held in vans and forbidden to speak to each other in Kurdish.

Permission to use them had been given by Stoke Newington police after actors told them they wanted to use replicas.Before the raid, officers hadsealed off the area and anyone who left the hall was seized and handcuffed. These turned out to be toy ones borrowed from the National Theatre. A Kurdish theatre group has won £155,000 from the Metropolitan Police after armed officers raided a Hackney community centre, mistaking the rehearsal of a Harold Pinter play for a hostage siege. In a monumental misunderstanding, which could have been scripted by Pinter himself, dozens of officers burst into the Kurdistan Workers' Association Community Centre during a dress-rehearsal of Mountain Language, about the oppression of Kurds in Turkey.Neighbours had raised the alarm after seeing the actors, all Kurdish refugees who had fled persecution, carrying guns into the building. A Kurdish theatre group has won £155,000 from the Metropolitan Police after armed officers raided a Hackney community centre, mistaking the rehearsal of a Harold Pinter play for a hostage siege.

Harriet Wistrich said: "We do not understand how you can conclude that the loss of control of the investigation at that crucial stage did not change the outcome." She said the case had "echoes" of the inquiry into the murder of the London student Stephen Lawrence.. The PCA said: "There was a delay in tracing the [suspects] which clearly added to your perception that no action was being taken."But the authority said it believed the delay did not affect the outcome of the investigation. Yesterday in a letter to the PCA, the family's solicitor asked what acting would be taken against the senior officer. It said that Mr Harding did not believe that he had sufficient grounds to arrest the suspects or search their homes.

The PCA said, however, that Detective Superintendent William Harding, who headed the inquiry, "did lose immediate control" over part of the investigation after confusion between Surrey officers and the neighbouring Hampshire force, where the attack took place. Next time I'll shoot you." The family also complained that police focused their investigation on proving that Mr Hodasi's death was suicide and that statements taken from witnesses concentrated on this line of inquiry.But after an investigation by Thames Valley Police, the PCA said that a "full and thorough" investigation into the death had taken place and that "other avenues" than suicide had been explored. Although the cases are not being directly linked, the West Mercia officers hope to learn something from the experience of the Surrey team.Members of Mr Hodasi's family had complained that Surrey Police had paid "insufficient attention" to the links between his hanging and the racist attack, in which one assailant said: "You black, I know where you live. Last September, an inquest into the death of Akofa Hodasi, 24, recorded an open verdict after Surrey Police said they could not "rule out" the possibility that he had been murdered.Officers on the inquiry team have been liaising with colleagues from West Mercia who are investigating the mysterious hangings of two black men in Telford, Shropshire. A senior police officer lostcontrol of an investigation into the mysterious death of an African student who was found hanged in a tree two days after being attacked by racists, the Police Complaints Authority has found. The error led to suspects in the attack not being interviewed for three weeks after the student's death, prompting fears from his family that crucial evidence could have been lost.