This debate is beginning to miss the point and is becoming a general "passengers versus airline" slanging match.
Surely the key question here is the actions of the small minority of passengers who caused great inconvenience to their fellow passengers and to the airline? I would have thought it would be more appropriate for the [alleged] miscreants to answer for their actions to the police on behalf of those other passengers and the airline. Instead, MOL et al seem to be trying to force Astraeus to justify the diversion and claiming that it was unnecessary. Do they deny the fact that there was a problem? It is almost as if they are citing that the airline is somehow guilty rather than the troublemakers.
I don't think anyone here is trying to suggest that everyone on board was involved and for MOL and Remmington to defend the reputations of the innocent is commendable to a point. But there you have to draw the line - in defending the reputations of the innocent, you cannot afford to overlook or in any way trivialise the allegations facing the accused.
As a matter of course, airlines don't tend to regard smoking, drinking own alcohol, assault on cabin crew and threatening behaviour as acceptable forms of conduct on board, whether exercised individually or jointly.
The questions of what happened after the decision to divert was made are largely irrelevant - by that point, the disturbance had taken place and the crew had taken what I think to be an extremely sensible decision to get the aircraft down on the ground. If you are aware that one of the cabin crew has been assaulted, you don't hang around at FL350 to see if someone has another go.
It's just extremely sad that the actions of a few have led to so much inconvenience for so many but there are virtually no other ways to deal with problems of this nature other than the one chosen chosen by the Astraeus crew.