MANILA, 3 June 2006 — Four US Marine soldiers facing rape charges, in a case that has threatened to sour relations between the two allies, saw their accuser in court for the first time as the formal trial began yesterday.

The soldiers, all under the custody of the US Embassy in Manila, have denied and refused to answer the charges, prompting the judge to enter a plea of “not guilty“ plea for them.

Under Philippine laws, the rape charges are punishable by up to 40 years in jail.

Lance Corporals Dominic Duplantis, Keith Silkwood, Daniel Smith and Staff Sergeant Chad Carpentier sat silently through the three-hour hearing.

A security guard at the Neptune bar, at the former US Subic Bay Naval base near Olongapo city, northwest of Manila, told the court that on the night of Nov. 1, he saw the woman — identified only as “Nicole” — looking drunk and unconscious and being carried “like a stick” on the back of a serviceman.

Judge Benjamin Pozon and prosecution lawyer Hazel Valdez asked the witness, Gerald Muyot, to point out the man he saw carrying the woman.

Muyot approached and tapped the shoulder of a man who identified himself to the court as Daniel Smith. “She’s with me and we gotta go now,” Muyot quoted Smith as saying as he left the bar with the woman.

Muyot said they boarded a van parked outside the bar and he saw Smith lower down the woman inside the vehicle.

He said the next time he saw the woman was several hours later when she returned to the bar, accompanied by police, to look for the Americans. “She said they did something bad to her that’s why she wants to find them,” Muyot said.

Prosecutors allege Lance Cpl. Smith raped the woman while the others — Lance Cpl. Keith Silkwood, Lance Cpl. Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sgt. Chad Carpentier — members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa — cheered him on.

Yesterday’s hearing was the first time the servicemen faced the woman in court.

Watching the proceedings two rows behind the Americans, the woman at one point broke down in tears and was comforted by relatives and members of women’s groups.

The soldiers claimed that only one of them had sex with the woman in a van and that it was consensual.

“How can the victim have consensual sex if she is in that condition?” Evalyn Ursua, the woman’s lawyer, told reporters during a break, adding the witnesses were “very consistent and able to relate what happened inside the bar.”

The rape case has prompted small protests and calls by some politicians for a Visiting Forces Agreement to be amended or scrapped. Critics say the 1998 agreement gives too much protection to US troops accused of committing crimes while on exercises with Filipino soldiers or advising them in anti-terrorism tactics against Muslim and communist rebel groups.

But analysts see little long-term damage to ties between the United States and the Philippines, a former US colony.

Last week, the allies expanded their security cooperation to areas such as terrorism, piracy, disasters and outbreaks of disease.

In two previous procedural meetings, Judge Benjamin Pozon said he wanted to finish the case by August, asking the two sides to attend hearings four times a week.

The prosecution will present 40 witnesses, while the defense plans less than a dozen to testify in favor of the four Marines. (With reports from agencies)