'Fully-armed SWAT team' swooped on New York home of 9/11 rescue worker over Leeds pub assault 43 years ago

Rory McGrath is standing trial accused of punching a police officer at the Miners pub in Garforth in March 1980, causing actual bodily harm.

The officer suffered a broken nose after being attacked by a group which he said included McGrath. Four others were convicted of the attack in 1980, with McGrath fleeing the country before he could stand trial.

The 64-year-old was extradited back to Britain last year at the request of West Yorkshire Police and has been held on remand at HMP Leeds since July.

Giving evidence at Leeds Crown Court, he said he was at home when “12-to-15 US Marshals, fully armed in riot gear” turned up.

He said: “I went outside to see what was going on, I thought it might to do with my sons. They did not tell me anything. They went into my house and took my wife and kids out of bed.”

McGrath said he was taken to court and a $1 million bail was slapped on him, to which he had to pay $250,000 – money he got through a loan.

He said he was under house arrest for more than 400 days before being flown back to Britain.

The court heard that Irish-born McGrath had been a volunteer worker at the World Trade Center in the days following the attacks in New York in September 2001.

He grew up in the Seacroft area of Leeds and attended St Kevin’s RC School.

He had been living in Tadcaster in 1980 and was in Garforth drinking on the night of the assault. He admits being at the scene on Aberford Road but denies punching the officer.

Asked by his barrister, Mark Fraser, why he left the country, McGrath said he had been convicted of violence against police officers in 1979 but maintained it was self defence.

He said: “I was getting set up for something I did not do. I was scared.” He claimed that because of his upbringing in the working-class Seacroft area of Leeds, the police “constantly harassed” him.

He added: “There’s always been problems with the police. If you went out on a bike aged 11 the police would stop and ask where you stole it from. Where you were going where you had been.

"I could not own a car because I would be suspected of stealing it.”

McGrath said after fleeing Yorkshire he went to Dublin and worked in the construction industry until he left for America in 1986. He became a US citizen in 2002.

Mr Fraser asked him: “Had you been hiding out?”

McGrath responded: “Hiding out in plain view? I did not change my name or have any plastic surgery.”

He said his former fiancé from when he lived in Tadcaster had since found him on Facebook within “minutes” and made contact, illustrating the point that he was not in hiding.

Asked by Mr Fraser whether he attacked the officer that night in Garforth, he replied: “Absolutely not.”

The trial continues.