Two middle-aged men wearing well-tailored suits and crisply pressed shirts sat impassively inside a bullet-proof glass cage in a vast Dutch gymnasium attached to a former military base yesterday at the opening stages of the Lockerbie bombing trial.
It was the first time the Libyan suspects, who are accused of murdering 270 people, were seen in open court since their handover earlier this year.
They and the army of prosecution and defence lawyers and media from around the world, which descended on "Camp Zeist", near the city of Utrecht, were on a tiny part of Scottish territory on foreign soil, under a unique agreement with the Dutch authorities.
Led handcuffed from cells, converted out of nuclear attack-proof bunkers, to the makeshift courtroom under heavy guard, the two Libyan secret agents were greeted with smiles and handshakes by their legal team as they entered the Scottish High Court for the pre-trial hearing.
Libya's Col Gadafy finally agreed to hand over the two suspects last April, with the help of intense diplomacy by the former South African President, Mr Nelson Mandela, following a UN arms embargo and a freeze on Libyan financial assets abroad.
The arrest of the Libyan intelligence agents, Mr Abdel Basset Ali El Megrahi (47) and Mr Ali Amin Khalifa Fhimah (42), followed one of the biggest international searches ever mounted as the world recoiled from the enormity of the 1988 Christmas-time terrorist airline attack.
British and US investigators carried out more than 12,000 interrogations. The Scottish Crown prosecution case involves evidence from 70 countries, 15,000 statements, 18,000 items of property and 35,000 photographs. After years of investigation, textile fibres of clothing around explosives crammed into a suitcase were traced to Malta, where, it is believed, a Libyan registered the luggage that was put aboard the doomed Pan Am Flight 103.
The Libyans stand accused of blowing up the aircraft on December 21st, 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground near the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The bodies of the dead, many of whom were on their way home to celebrate Christmas, were scattered over an 80-mile radius.
They are also charged with conspiracy to murder and with contravention of the Civil Aviation Act by placing explosives aboard an aircraft.
In a legal challenge to try to have conspiracy charges against them dropped, their lawyers argued that since any alleged conspiracy took place outside Scot land the charge could not be presented to a Scottish court.
A five-hour defence argument before Judge Lord Sutherland hinged on the fact that nowhere in the conspiracy charge was Scotland mentioned. Therefore, they held, the court had no jurisdiction to try the accused men on this count.
The defence also challenged the wording of the charge, which referred to their being members of the Libyan intelligence service, and of possession of bomb-making timing devices, which, it was argued, was prejudicial to their case and irrelevant.
Mr Alastair Campbell QC, for the prosecution, told the hearing it would prove that there was a conspiracy to destroy a civilian aircraft, which exploded over Scotland, causing the deaths of all those aboard, which was sufficient to render Scottish jurisdiction in the case.
The trial, which is expected to cost Britain more than £50 million, could go on for at least two years. The proceedings will be housed in new ultra-secure buildings at Camp Zeist, where accommodation is to be made available for relatives of the victims.
A relatives' representative at yesterday's pre-trial hearing said: "The 11th anniversary during Christmas week is coming up and it rekindles all that sadness and those terrible memories; families will come in force to the trial itself and they are saving their strength for that ordeal."
None of the seats reserved for relatives was occupied yesterday, but only feet away from the suspects sat the elder brother of the accused bomber, Mr Megrahi, and a close relative of the other Libyan suspect.
The pre-trial hearing continues today.