The Philippine Army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon has formally submitted his recommendation for the conduct of either court martial or separation proceedings against 59 officers and 37 enlisted personnel involved in last month's alleged coup plot, said an army spokesman on Thursday.

Army spokesman Maj. Bartolome Bacarro said in a news briefing to the media that Esperon submitted the recommendation against the officers and enlisted personnel, led by Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, to the office of Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Gen. Generoso Senga on Wednesday.

"All of them have varying degrees of participation (in the plot) . All of them have corresponding violation of the Articles of War or administrative offense, that depends on their participation," said Bacarro.

The spokesman said the majority of 96 officers and men have been recommended by the army chief to face the court martial while the rest were endorsed to face a military separations board.

The recommendation of the army chief was based on a findings of Maj. Gen. Ferdinand Bocobo, the Army Inspector General, who headed a fact-finding investigation about the plot.

Lim was sacked as commander of an elite scout ranger regiment commander and subsequently put under custody on Feb. 24, for allegedly planning to join anti-government rallies and declare his withdrawal of support for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

The Philippine Marines is conducting a parallel investigation against a number of its officers and men, led by bemedaled Col. Ariel Querubin, for plotting to join the same rallies.

Querubin was sacked as commander of a Marine brigade on Feb. 28, two days after he led scores of officers and men in protesting the relief of a Marine commander at the Marine headquarters in Fort Bonifacio, Metro Manila.

Source: Xinhua