But as you enter Camp Zeist, the former military base where the Lockerbie trial is being held, it is impossible not to be aware that while you are in the heart of the Dutch countryside - a mere 30 miles from Amsterdam - you are very definitely under Scottish legal authority.

Everywhere you go you are surrounded by armed Scottish police officers who constantly patrol the area. It is an odd and disorienting experience.

Long process

The legal proceedings themselves have been slow and painstaking.

There have been moments of tension - the questioning of an arms dealer accused of making the timing device for the bomb, and of a self-confessed Palestinian terrorist implicated by the defence.

Those were dramatic moments and produced heated exchanges across the courtroom floor.

But overall this has been an unspectacular if rigorous public examination of all the evidence against the Libyans - the first time this has happened since they were named as the prime suspects by the Scottish prosecuting authorities nine years ago.

There are a few here at Camp Zeist who regard this trial as a put up job - a political fix engineered by the United Nations to try, then acquit the accused and so help bring an end to Libya's international isolation.

To others, it is part of a conspiracy by Britain and the United States to shift blame away from Palestinians linked to Syria - an ally in the Gulf War of 1991 and an important player in the quest for peace in the Middle East.

At the scene

To me, the fact that Scottish police officers managed to gather enough evidence to muster a case at all is astounding - given the mayhem which followed the Lockerbie disaster 12 years ago.

As a young radio reporter, I witnessed the aftermath, driving into the town past the nose cone of the jet lying disembodied in a field on Tundergarth hill.

Skirting around the silent ranks of redundant ambulances, silhouetted against the Christmas lights, I followed the fire hoses snaking through streets littered with metal debris, personal belongings and body parts, to a crater where the fuel-laden wings had landed in a huge fireball, obliterating the homes and lives of 11 residents.

The grim cascade of death from Pan Am flight 103 left a trail of wreckage across 800 square miles of southern Scotland and northern England.

For the relatives of the victims - men like Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, and John Mosey, whose daughter Helga was killed - this trial is a daily reminder of the horror. And yet they sit through every painful day of evidence.

I met them for dinner one evening and joined them for a drink back at the flat they share in some huge concrete housing scheme in a part of the Netherlands you do not see in the tourist brochures.

As we talked, it was clear both men, and their families, had suffered much more than the loss of a loved one.

Mr Mosey, a minister, had a breakdown and lost his job. Mr Swire - a doctor - felt forced to stand down as a partner in his medical practice.

They have suffered financially despite help from the Lockerbie disaster fund.

Through all this, however, you get the impression of strength - a determination to find out not just what happened to the Pan Am jet but, also, how and why.

They are not convinced the trial will give them all the answers because it has only a narrow legal focus. They want a public enquiry into the bombing and consider they have been promised one by the UK Government.

They are well aware of the difficulties this may create for the politicians of the new world order.

For many, the end of the Lockerbie trial will bring closure - a convenient place from which their lives can move on.

But for Jim Swire and John Mosey you get the feeling the verdicts, whatever they are, will merely mark the end of one process and the beginning of another stage in their crusade for truth and justice.