For 25 marks: If a Libyan national is accused of setting in action in Malta a murderous course of events that culminates in an American jet six miles over Scotland killing people on the ground as well as passengers, where, and under whose law, should the accused be tried?

Moammar Gadhafi (CP photo)

Gadhafi has been the leader of the north African nation of Libya since a military coup in 1969. He's outlasted half a dozen U.S. presidents and has been on good terms with none of them. Relations between Gadhafi and the U.S. reached a low in 1986 when U.S. planes nearly killed him in bombing raids and succeeded in killing or wounding some of his children.

Gadhafi has been known to finance groups as disparate as the Black Panthers and the IRA, and many Arab extremists have counted on his support.

The Lockerbie charges were made simultaneously in Washington and Edinburgh in November, 1991: murder, conspiracy to murder, contravention of international aviation laws. A request to Libya for extradition of the two accused was made. The intention was to try them in the U.S. or Scotland.

It took seven years of pressure to get to the stage of preparing for a trial. The UN first asked Libya to co-operate and was refused. A series of UN sanctions against Libya, including embargoes and the freezing of assets, failed to get that co-operation. Finally, in 1998, the combined efforts of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela, along with pressure from the Arab League and a proposal to try the accused in a neutral country under Scottish law, prevailed. Gadhafi agreed to hand the men over for trial. The venue was to be the Netherlands but almost everything else would be as it would have been in a Scottish court.

The suspects were employed by the Libyan national airline in Malta. They're charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and violations of international aviation laws.

In April 1999, the men were flown from Libya to The Netherlands for the trial. After a year of adjournments, the trial began in May 2000. It was hardly an open-and-shut case. The evidence, including defence scenarios of alternatives to the facts alleged, put many works of fiction to shame.

However, in January 2001, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombing. His appeal of the conviction failed. His co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima was found not guilty.