A father of two will appear before judges on Friday following his arrest on suspicion of murder after his wife disappeared from a luxury Mediterranean cruise.

Daniel Belling, 45, was arrested earlier this week at Rome’s Ciampino airport as he was about to board a Ryanair flight to Dublin with his two young children.

He and his Chinese-born wife, Li Yinglei, together with their children aged six and four, were on an 11-day cruise around the Mediterranean when she disappeared.

She has not been seen or heard from since. The cruise began on February 9 in the Italian port of Civitavecchia, north of Rome, and took them to Malta, Greece and Cyprus.