@obgraham,
Actually I agree with you (well, apart from the "rubbish"!). What I was trying to say that it seems that the PIC made the **command decision** not to de-plane the passengers because he was told that to do so would constitute a security breach: righly or wrongly, sensibly or stupidly that's the decision he made (or so it seems...).
I'm with you that, in this ridiculous situation, passengers could have taken matters into their own hands, confident that public opinion would support them in the end. But there's a difference between passengers saying, "Right, we've had enough!", opening the doors and de-planing regardless, and passengers maybe physically removing a protesting crew from in front of the doors, and ignoring a PIC who says, "I'm ordering you, Sir, to return to your seat...".
As the old saying goes, Hit a Cop, Go to Jail......
AGB