A casket containing the 58-year-old's body arrived at Cape Town airport on a flight from London on Sunday morning, a witness at the airport told Reuters.

The body was taken to a funeral parlour outside Cape Town, the head of the funeral company said.

"Arrangements have been made and the family will decide whether it's going to be an internment or cremation," Theo Rix, general manager of funeral company Doves, told Reuters.

Woolmer's widow Gill, who lives in Cape Town, was not at the airport to meet the body, Rix said.

• Reports on Woolmer's murder

Woolmer was killed on March 18 a day after Pakistan were eliminated from the World Cup following a shock defeat by Ireland.

He was found unconscious in his hotel room and pronounced dead at hospital. Police said he was strangled in a crime still shrouded in mystery.

Senior investigator Mark Shields, Jamaica's deputy police commissioner, has said he plans to fly to South Africa to meet Gill Woolmer in early May but has denied media reports he would accompany the body.

A South African Airways official said Shields was not travelling on the same flight as Woolmer's body.