THE trial of Mr Timothy James McVeigh for the 1995 Oklahoma bombing in which 168 people died opens on Monday and will last into the summer. Mr McVeigh, a former decorated army sergeant, faces the death penalty if found guilty.
His trial will be followed by that of an army colleague, Mr Terry Lynn Nichols, for similar murder and conspiracy charges.
The trial of Mr McVeigh has been transferred to Denver, Colorado, 600 miles away, because of the difficulty of having a fair trial in Oklahoma. But the relatives of the victims of what was the worst act of domestic terrorism in US history will be able to follow the court hearing from Oklahoma by closed circuit television.
The explosion, without warning, on April 19th, 1995, reduced the nine storey Alfred P. Murrah federal building to rubble. Some 168 people were killed, including 19 children in a creche in the building. Hundreds more were injured.
The case against Mr McVeigh is based mainly on the wreckage of a hired van containing the 4,890 lbs of explosive ammonium nitrate and fuel which demolished the building. The prosecution will claim that Mr McVeigh rented the yellow van, using the assumed name of Robert Kling.
Just 90 minutes after the blast and 60 miles north of Oklahoma, Mr McVeigh was stopped for driving a car without a number plate. He was arrested when found to be carrying a gun.
The prosecution will claim that Mr McVeigh's clothes were covered with bomb residue. It will also be claimed that his fingerprints were on a receipt for the purchase of 40 bags of ammonium nitrate fertiliser.
In addition, the prosecution has a key witness, Mr Michael Fortier, a former friend of Mr McVeigh who lived near him in the year before the bombing. Mr Fortier at first denied Mr McVeigh was involved in it, but has now changed his story after pleading guilty to helping him transport stolen weapons and failing to warn the government of the bomb plot.
Mr Fortier is going to testify that Mr McVeigh was planning a revenge bombing on a federal building following the assault by federal forces on the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas. The prosecution says it has other written proof of Mr McVeigh's strong anti government views. In his car was an excerpt from The Turner Diaries, a novel which is said to be the bible of white militia groups and describes a truck bomb attack on the FBI building in Washington.
Mr Fortier's wife, Lori, who has been given immunity, is expected to testify that she helped forge a driver's licence for Mr McVeigh, in the name of Robert Kling, which he used to hire the van later identified by an axle number.
The defence team, led by a skilled lawyer, Mr Stephen Jones, will challenge the prosecution on various fronts. He has been using his own investigators to try to show that the bombing was the work of an international terrorist group from the Middle East or Europe. The IRA has even been mentioned.
Mr Jones will try to cast doubt on the forensic evidence against Mr McVeigh provided by the FBI laboratory in Washington. A government inquiry into sloppy procedures at the laboratory has been made available to the defence.
The defence will try to show that the Fortiers' credibility is suspect as they are admitted drug users.
The identification of Mr McVeigh as the man who rented the van by employees at the rental company will also be challenged. At first an employee insisted that Mr McVeigh was accompanied by another man, but later said he was wrong about this.