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Noordin's body to be returned to Malaysia next week: police
The body of slain Islamist militant leader Noordin Mohammed Top will be returned to Malaysia next week, Indonesia's police chief said today.
The body of slain Islamist militant leader Noordin Mohammed Top will be returned to Malaysia next week, Indonesia's police chief said today.
"On Thursday, God willing, (Noordin's) family will come here to take the body to Johor, Malaysia," national police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters.
Malaysian Noordin, a 41-year-old who led a violent splinter faction of the radical Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network was killed along with three other militants at the bloody end of a nine-hour siege in Central Java last week.
Police said earlier in the week they had decided to hand Noordin's body over to his first wife in Malaysia, Rahmah Rusdi, with whom he had three children.
Two other women he had married while on the run in Indonesia had their request to access the body turned down by Indonesian police because their marriages were never officially registered.
Police also announced today that three people who were arrested during last week's swoop near Solo city had been officially named suspects, a legal move allowing them to be held for longer.
Supono, alias Kedu, faces likely terror charges for assisting Noordin and helping in a foiled plot to blow up the home of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with a truck bomb, police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said.
