Couple served fresh warrant after daughter's body found.

SENDAI, May 15 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING DETAILS)

A couple in Hasama, Miyagi Prefecture were served fresh arrest warrants Wednesday after their 2-year-old daughter's decomposed body was discovered in a local graveyard, police said.

The police said they served the fresh arrest warrants on Yukio Suzuki, 44, a gang leader, and his 28-year-old wife Benilda, of Philippine descent, on suspicion of dumping the body of their daughter Samia, who went missing in October 1999 at the age of 2.

The police are conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of Samia's death, police officials said.

The couple were arrested last month on suspicion they were not feeding their daughter properly.

The police found Samia's body after her parents had already been arrested, and confessed to burying her body in a graveyard in the town of Hasama in the northeastern Japan prefecture after she died.

The police arrested the couple on information provided by staff at a local daycare nursery the girl used to attend. The mother stopped bringing the girl to the nursery in October 1999, the police said.

The town, however, did not report the fact to the police until this March, as Suzuki had told town officials Samia was put up for adoption.

According to police sources, Benilda told investigators she found her daughter dead on a futon on the second floor of their house on June 1 last year.

She said her husband told her to go to work and when she returned from work, the girl's body was no longer there, according to the sources.