Kuala Lampur, October 01: The wife of slain Islamist militant leader Noordin Mohammed Top has left for Indonesia to claim the body of her husband for burial in Malaysia on Friday, a family representative said.
“Noordin’s wife, Rahmah Rusdi and his brother Yahya Mohammed Top left at 9.10 am (0110 GMT) Thursday morning for Jakarta to collect his body,” Badarudin Ismail told AFP Thursday.
“She will be meeting with Malaysian diplomats there and will be taken to the police morgue for the final paperwork,” he added.
“Once the paperwork is settled, we expect to receive Noordin’s body in Malaysia on Friday.”
Noordin, a 41-year-old Malaysian who led a violent splinter faction of the radical Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, was killed along with several other militants at the bloody end of a nine-hour siege in Central Java three weeks ago.
Badarudin said Noordin’s body, upon arrival at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport, would be taken directly to the southern Malaysian state of Johor. His remains will be buried at a cemetery in the small village of Kampung Melayu.
“There will be no fuss, we will carry out the funeral rites and burial as soon as we can and he will be laid to rest by Friday,” Badarudin added.
Noordin’s death ended an exhaustive manhunt for a man who led an organisation blamed for a string of deadly attacks.
He is believed to have masterminded the double suicide bombing of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta in July that left seven people dead.
Noordin is also widely believed to be behind a 2003 attack on the Marriott that killed 12 people, as well as the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta and 2005 attacks on tourist restaurants on the holiday island of Bali.
—Agencies