MANILA: A Philippine court yesterday postponed hearing in the trial of four US Marines accused of raping a Filipino woman after she said she lacked confidence in the prosecutors and asked for them to be replaced.

Judge Benjamin Pozon of the Makati City regional trial court said the hearings would resume on Monday, giving the woman and her public lawyers time to settle their differences.

Raul Gonzalez, the justice secretary, said the government was not inclined to give in to the woman’s request to change the team of public lawyers helping her case.

“Unless they have a very good reason for such a request, they cannot tell us what to do,” Gonzalez told reporters, adding he has not seen a letter from the woman asking for the change in the prosecution team.

The 22-year-old 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 Marines, being held by the US embassy in Manila, deny the rape charges, claiming they were being framed after one of them had consensual sex with the woman in a van on November 1 last year in Subic Bay, a former US navy base northwest of Manila.

The case has fuelled heavy local media interest and critics have argued that the agreement allowing US 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 US, the Southeast Asian country’s former colonial ruler.

Under a Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries, Judge 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.

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