MANILA, Philippines -- The Court of Appeals has deferred its resolution on the petition filed by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and other soldiers implicated in the takeover of a posh hotel in Makati City last year to reverse the decision of a lower court to try them for rebellion.

Instead, the appeals court ordered Trillanes and his supporters, as well as the Makati City regional trial court, to submit simultaneously memoranda within 15 days "for a more judicious study of the conflicting positions of the parties" concerned.

Trillanes, together with Captains Gary Alejano, Segundino Orfiano Jr.;
Lieutenants Senior Grade James Layug, Manuel Cabochan, Eugene
Gonzalez, Andy Torrato; Second Lieutenant Jonnell Sangalang, Lieutenant
Junior Grade Arturo Pascua Jr., Ensign Armand Pontejos; First Lieutenants
Billy Pascua, Corporal Clecarte Dahan; Private First Class Juanity Julbury, Julius
Mesa and Cezari Yassir asked the Court of Appeals to issue a temporary restraining order on the February 2008 ruling of the Makati court to try them for rebellion after staging a seven-hour siege on the Manila Peninsula Hotel in November 2007.

Petitioners said Judge Elmo Alameda abused his discretion when he issued the order.

They said a TRO should be issued pending the evaluation of their petition to dismiss the ruling of the Makati court "to relieve them from further grave and irreparable injury caused by the assailed order."

They insisted that they should not be charged with rebellion because not all the elements that would constitute this offense were present when they took over the Manila Peninsula after walking out of a Makati court that was hearing another case involving the July 2003 takeover of a posh apartment building in the same city also by Trillanes and his supporters.

But the appeals court, through Associate Justice Andres Reyes, said the records of the case on the hotel takeover showed that the grounds cited by Trillanes and other petitioners for an issuance of a TRO were the same ones that needed to be resolved in their appeal for a reversal of the lower court ruling.

"Such being the case, this Court cannot reasonably proceed to rule on the preventive relief prayed for by the petitioners without delving into the merits of the present petition," the appeals court said.

On Nov. 29, 2007, Trillanes, Army Brigadier General Danilo Lim and at least 20 other officers walked out of the Makati court hearing the coup charges against them in connection with the siege on the Oakwood Apartments on July 2003 to demand the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her military and defemse officials due to allegations of corruption.

The senator and his supporters marched to the Manila Peninsula Hotel where they holed up for six hours, again to call for the resignation of Arroyo before combined military and police elements attacked the hotel and arrested them.