Decades after moving to the US, retired construction worker Rory McGrath was extradited to the UK to face trial for a 41-year-old crime. Eventually he

The man extradited to the UK for a 41-year-old pub brawl

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2023-03-19 19:00:07

Decades after moving to the US, retired construction worker Rory McGrath was extradited to the UK to face trial for a 41-year-old crime. Eventually he was found not guilty.

Rory McGrath had just stepped through his front door carrying the morning newspaper when a dozen or so officers from the US Marshals Service arrived at his New York home with their guns drawn.

They ordered his wife and twin 18-year-old sons out of bed at gunpoint. It was May 2021 and New York was starting to emerge from Covid restrictions, but for McGrath and his family it was just the start of a "nightmare that has never ended".

The officers were acting at the request of prosecutors in England. McGrath, a retired construction worker, faced extradition and trial in the UK over his involvement in a drunken street fight four decades earlier.

The story began in March 1980 when McGrath, an Irish-British national born in Leeds, was out drinking with friends. The 21-year-old, by his own admission, became involved in a drunken fight between two groups of young men. In his telling, he fled to a nearby pub when police arrived. "I'm not getting involved with the police," he remembers thinking.