MANILA (Reuters) - A Filipino woman who accuses four U.S. Marines of raping her last year wants the Philippine justice department to replace her public prosecutors, saying she has lost confidence in them.

The Marines, being held by the U.S. embassy in Manila, deny the charges, claiming they were being framed after one of them had consensual sex with the woman in a van on Nov. 1 in Subic Bay, northwest of Manila.

The sailors began testifying this week, with Lance Corporal Daniel Smith telling the court the woman helped him to put on a condom when she agreed to have sex after they met at a bar on the former U.S. navy base at Subic.

The woman and her mother wrote to chief state prosecutor Jovencito Zuno, asking him to replace four of five public lawyers due to lack of confidence and incompetence.

"They want to lose the case," the woman told reporters late on Thursday, hours after she and her mother stormed out of the court in protest against the handling of the rape complaint.

The case has fuelled heavy local media interest and critics have argued that the agreement allowing U.S. soldiers to train in the Philippines gives the Marines too much legal protection.

But the trial has prompted only small protests and is not likely to hurt close ties between the Philippines and the United States, the Southeast Asian country's former colonial ruler.

Dozens of activists from the women's rights group Gabriela held a noisy rally on Friday at the U.S. embassy in Manila and the court in Makati, the country's financial centre.

The sailors, based in Okinawa, Japan, had just finished military exercises with Philippine troops and were on shore leave when they met the 22-year-old woman.

Under a Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries, Judge Benjamin Pozon has one year from the filing of the case last December to hear evidence and give a verdict. Testimony is expected to finish by October with hearings four times a week.

From June to August, the prosecution presented a case that the woman was drunk and not in control on the night of the alleged rape, with the woman taking the stand to dispute defence claims that she consented to have sex with Smith.

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