Lockerbie trial UK's most expensive ever

Judges listened to evidence for 84 days

LONDON, England -- The nine-month long Lockerbie trial is estimated to be the most expensive in British legal history, costing nearly £60 million ($90m).

All of the set-up costs, plus 80 per cent of running costs, will be met by the UK Treasury, with the remaining costs falling to the Scottish Executive.

The United States Government has pledged to reimburse the Treasury and the Scottish Executive for all the extra expense caused by holding the trial abroad instead of in Scotland. But so far it has only handed over £4.8 million.

According to the Scottish Courts Service, negotiations are continuing with the U.S. Government, but talks were delayed by the presidential election and its aftermath.

According to official estimates, the bill for setting up the state-of-the-art courtroom, prison, media centre and other facilities has been put at about £12 million.

Running costs for the trial, including paying police officers, prison service and Crown Office staff, translation and transcription expenses, are estimated at £2 million a month.

That £2 million includes prosecution costs that have run at about £175,000 per month for the duration of the trial.

The two accused men had been kept in custody at the 100-acre site at Camp Zeist near the Dutch city of Utrecht -- a former United States air base -- since April 1999, totting up a bill of £67,000 a day over the 21 months since they arrived in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), part of the Department of Justice, has also paid for the costs of two members of the families of each of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing to attend the trial at Camp Zeist, or at one of the four remote sites to which the proceedings were broadcast on closed circuit television, for one week.

The Department of Justice also granted cash for the setting up of a secure web site that could only be accessed by the families of those who died.

The web site, run from Syracuse University College of Law in New York, includes summaries of each day's trial proceedings.

The two accused Libyans arrived in the Netherlands by U.N. plane on April 5, 1999, and were then extradited to Camp Zeist, deemed to be Scottish territory for the trial.

The trial opened on May 3 last year. There were a total of 84 days of evidence from 227 prosecution and three defence witnesses.

The 230 witnesses came from various countries, including Libya, America, Japan, Germany, Malta, Sweden, India, France and Britain.

The evidence ran to 10,232 pages of court transcripts covering more than three million words.

During the trial, the court was shown a total of 2,488 pieces of evidence including photographs, charred clothing, pieces of wreckage and a reconstruction of the luggage container that held the planted bomb.

The trial was heard by a panel of three judges -- Lord Sutherland, Lord Maclean and Lord Coulsfield. The judges sat without a jury.

A fourth judge, Lord Abernethy, listened to the evidence and was ready to take over as "substitute" should any of his colleagues have fallen ill or died during the long-running case.

The Scottish Law Commission
UK Treasury

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.