Two policemen have been charged with raping a 13-year-old girl who was at the centre of a diplomatic row between Malaysia and Philippines last year, reports said today.

Mohamad Fauzi Yahya, 34, and Ahmad Nazri Zainurddin, 33, pleaded not guilty yesterday to raping the girl at a temporary detention centre in Sabah between July 27 and August 12 last year, The Star said.

The sessions court in the state capital Kota Kinabalu fixed May 26-29 for the trial and denied bail for the two men who face a maximum 20 years in jail if convicted, the newspaper said.

The 13-year-old girl, identified o­nly as Angelica, was wrongly deported to the Philippines in September along with thousands of Filipinos in a crackdown against illegal migrants in Sabah.

Diplomatic protest

Initially thought to be a Filipino, the girl's claim she had been raped at a detention centre in Sabah provoked outrage in the Philippines.

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo shot a strongly-worded letter to Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad asking him to immediately act o­n the complaint. A diplomatic protest was also lodged against Malaysia.

Investigations, however, revealed that the girl was a homeless Malaysian citizen living with illegal Filipino migrants in Sabah.

Angelica returned to Sabah in December and was placed in a government-run orphanage in Kota Kinabalu. A Malaysian probe team has reportedly identified three guards in the detention centre as her attackers. AFP