JAKARTA: The body of militant leader Noordin Mohammed Top will be returned to Malaysia next week.

"On Thursday, God willing, (Noordin's) family will come here to take the body to Johor," Indonesian police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri said yesterday.

Noordin, a 41-year-old who led a violent splinter faction of the Jemaah Islamiyah network, was killed along with three militants at the end of a nine-hour siege in Central Java last week.

Police said earlier in the week that they had decided to hand Noordin's body over to his first wife, Rahmah Rusdi, who lives in Malaysia with their three children.

Police have turned down the request of two Indonesian women he married to claim the body because their marriages were never registered.

Also yesterday, police announced that three people arrested during last week's swoop near Solo city had been named suspects, a legal move allowing them to be held longer.

Supono, alias Kedu, faced likely terror charges for assisting Noordin and helping in a foiled plot to blow up the home of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with a lorry bomb, police spokesman Nanan Soe-karna said.

Another suspect, Bejo, faced charges for helping to shelter Noordin, he said.

Putri Munawaroh, the wife of one of the militants killed in the raid, faced charges of sheltering Noordin.

The death of Noordin brought to an end an exhaustive manhunt for a man who led an organisation he once labelled "al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago".

He is believed to have masterminded the meticulously- planned double suicide bombings of the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels here in July in which seven people died.

He is also said to have been behind the 2003 attack on the Marriott that killed 12 people, as well as the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy here and 2005 attacks on tourist restaurants in Bali. -- AFP