A spokeswoman for Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service said: “Firefighters removed a set of handcuffs from a man using a disk cutter (essentially another name for an angle grinder).”

An eyewitness added: “It was a very unusual incident. It is not often a fire engine gets called to a court to deal with something like this.

“The court sitting continued unaffected while all this was going on. Several firefighters could be seen carrying equipment on their way out of the court.”