SHE SET ME UP!
Astonishing twist in the tale of Dublin mother who disappeared on a cruise: the husband who was arrested is freed, then makes incredible claim that she’s alive... and staged everything
THE man arrested on suspicion of killing his wife while on a cruise ship has made a series of extraordinary claims after being freed from jail in Italy.
Daniel Belling, speaking to the Irish Daily Mail yesterday, said he believes his wife is alive and well and was cruel enough to allow him languish in prison for 14 months despite knowing he was innocent.
Dublin-based Xian Lei Li disappeared two days into a Mediterranean cruise she had
embarked on with Mr Belling and their two children last year.
The Chinese mother, who ran a wedding business and lived in Clare Hall, Dublin, was last seen on February 11, 2017, on board the MSC Magnifica.
Mr Belling was arrested while attempting to board a Ryanair plane from Rome to Dublin and was in custody from that day until he was released this week.
Now out of the prison in Rome, computer programmer Mr Belling is due to arrive back in Ireland today.
He said: ‘Yesterday the Tribunal of Liberty [in Rome] decided to approve my lawyer’s application to have me released.
‘I was in prison for 14 months. I am beyond relieved to be free and to be able to return to Ireland. ‘I am feeling very relieved.’ The German, who had been living in Dublin with Ms Li before their cruise, added: ‘It’s like the feeling of when the wall came down in Berlin in 1989.’
He continued: ‘I want to return to Ireland and carry on with my life. If my wife would behave like a normal person then I would be happy to be with her.’
Mr Belling has always insisted he had nothing to do with his wife vanishing, telling Italian police she left of her own free will during the ten-day family cruise
‘I think she knows I’ve been in jail’
that started in Civitavecchia in Italy and took them to Malta, Greece and Cyprus.
Mr Belling had allegedly failed to tell the luxury cruise ship’s crew that his wife was not on board, a fact which aroused the suspicions of Italian police.
He claims that she left the ship of her own accord in Greece. He told the Mail: ‘I think my wife is most probably in China. There is a small probability that something happened to her in Greece but I believe she is in China.
‘I have no intention of trying to find my wife.
‘I plan to go to Ireland as fast as possible. My mother-in-law is living in my apartment and we are on very good terms.’
Mr Belling said he believes his wife was cruel enough to have left him in prison but insisted he is not angry with her.
He said: ‘I was worried about my wife for the first few weeks but not anymore, no. I think she knows I have been imprisoned.
‘I have been told that the news was in the Chinese media.
‘I’m not angry. She always had a very strange personality.’
When asked by the Mail if Ms Li would be so cruel as to leave him in prison, he replied: ‘Yes, of course, she is definitely that cruel. ‘She was that cruel already.’ He said his wife’s ‘empathy for other people’ is ‘very underdeveloped’ as he claimed she is ‘probably borderline bipolar [disorder]’ and he had ‘psychology reports to say that’.
Mr Belling insisted he did not want to see her again unless she has ‘some kind of therapy’ and ‘behaves like a normal person’.
He said he did not know why she would vanish, leaving him and their two children, and leaving him to languish in an Italian prison.
Mr Belling said his wife’s mother You Xiangzhen has told him she has not spoken to her daughter since she disappeared. He said: ‘She says no. ‘I don’t know what to think of it. Maybe my wife contacted her and said not to say anything, or maybe she hasn’t contacted her. ‘I have no idea.’ Mr Belling said prison conditions in Rome were ‘very difficult’.
He added: ‘It was very primitive, difficult to be there.’
He said the investigation into his wife’s disappearance is still ongoing, adding: ‘I will help the authorities in any way I can.’
Mr Belling’s lawyer Luigi Conti said the Tribunal of Liberty (Tribunale della Liberta) in Italy only decides if a person must remain in prison or be freed while the investigation is ongoing.
He said as his application before the Tribunal of Liberty was successful, his client was released from prison and allowed to return to Ireland while the prosecution continues to investigate the case.
Mr Conti said he expects the case to begin before the courts in the coming months.
He said it was better for his defence if Mr Belling returned to Italy when it comes before the courts.
Under Italian law, Mr Belling was allowed be held without formal charge or trial for a year to give the prosecution time to investigate, but had to be released if no evidence was produced.
Mr Belling told the Mail he did not know if his wife had planned to disappear and said he had no way to find her to try and encourage her to come forward to prove she is still alive.
When Mr Belling was asked if they were having problems on the cruise, he replied: ‘On the cruise itself it was just the normal stuff, me walking on eggshells.’
Ms Li’s mother Ms Xiangzhen previously alleged that her missing daughter argued frequently with Mr Belling.
She also said, in a sworn statement given to prosecutors in Rome, that her daughter had visible bruises on her wrists after one row with him, the Mail previously reported.
Ms Li’s mother, in a sworn statement to investigators acquired by Italy’s Chi L’Ha Visto, a missing persons TV programme, said the couple ‘often’ argued during the time she lived with them in Ireland.
However, she said she didn’t suspect him of involvement in her daughter’s disappearance, adding that he was a ‘very good person’.
Mr Belling’s lawyer, previously speaking to Chi L’Ha Visto, said Ms Li’s mother has visited her son-in-law in Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.
‘Me walking on eggshells’