The District of Columbia has agreed to pay $13.7 million to settle a class action suit brought by protesters arrested during a demonstration in 2000, lawyers in the case announced at court today. Lawyers for the protesters said it would be the largest amount ever paid in the U.

It was the first protests tied to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in April of 2000. D.C. Police corralled and arrested nearly 700 demonstrators. The District of Columbia will pay up to $13.7 million to settle the lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice on behalf of protesters and bystanders

A D.C. police detective says he overheard then-Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey order a controversial mass arrest during a demonstration in downtown Washington seven years ago, according to attorneys for people taken into custody that day.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) is pleased to announce a victorious settlement on behalf of eight people who were illegally arrested following April 20, 2002 lawful anti-war and IMF/World Bank protests.

The District agreed to pay $450,000 Monday to eight war protesters to settle a civil lawsuit they filed after a 2002 interrogation. The protesters had alleged that FBI agents had detained them in a Washington parking garage and interrogated them on videotape about their beliefs.

The arrest of Harvard history professor Henry Louis Gates in his home in Cambridge sparked a nationwide discussion about police misconduct.

The August 6 Washington Post Editorial on the mass arrests of peaceful protestors in Washington, D.C. in 2002 echoes Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s “extraordinary rebuke” of D.C. government and police officials.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan called D.C.’s mishandling of a high-profile suit alleging false arrest the “civil counterpart” of the Justice Department’s botched prosecution of Ted Stevens.