Edinburgh's chief prosecutor, Mr Norman MacFadyen, is expected today to read the charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and contravention of the Aviation Security Act, 1982, in an abandoned Dutch barracks at the tiny village of Zeist. So begins one of the trials of this and probably the next century.
For Scots Law, which remained independent of England's since the 1707 Act of Union, the Lockerbie trial represents a series of superlatives; the first outside Scotland, the first serious charge heard without a jury, the biggest mass murder, the longest, most complex and, at a cost estimated between £30 and £50 million sterling, the most expensive.
It is the beginning of a long ending for a case which took Scotland's smallest police force nearly three years to investigate, and more than seven more years of sanctions to force Libya to give up the accused.
The deadlock was broken last year, when the UK and US governments conceded the trial could take place outside Scotland, and the unique trial rules could come into play, replacing a jury with the majority decision of three Scottish judges.
The committal proceedings, expected today, will take place in private, with no response expected from the accused.
Defence lawyers are then expected to request about six months to prepare a case which involves evidence from 70 countries, 15,000 statements, 18,000 items of property and 35,000 photographs.
The prosecution case will feature claims that the two accused bought 20 bomb timing devices in the four years leading to the Pan Am bombing, set up front businesses in Zurich and Malta for the Libyan intelligence services and checked in a suitcase containing a bomb either in Malta, Frankfurt or London airports. But more than that cannot be reported after today, as Scotland's notoriously tight court reporting restrictions are clamped down on the world's media.
Legal experts are concerned that this could lead to mis-reporting and contempt of court by an American media pack, used to televised courtroom drama, background speculation and interpretation throughout.
Prof John Grant, a lawyer at Glasgow University, says that the lack of a jury will make the proceedings unusually dry.
"Scots Law is very low key," he says. "It will be a model of decorum, dignity and straight-dealing. There will be no histrionics or theatricals."