Paradise Lost: the Caribbean's shocking secret

Ben Mullany, the husband of a bride shot dead on their honeymoon in Antigua, died yesterday after being flown home to Morriston Hospital in the Welsh city of Swansea.

Mullany never recovered from a coma. He had been left with a bullet lodged in the back of his brain and a fractured skull following the suspected robbery. Doctors had earlier said they were undertaking tests to determine whether he was brain dead.

His wife Catherine died instantly in the early morning attack in their hotel room a week earlier.

The couple are now expected to have a joint funeral, most likely at St John the Evangelist in Rhos, Pontardawe, where they married on July 12.

A man who drove the Mullanys on a tour around Antigua has been taken into custody as Scotland Yard detectives arrived on the island to help investigate what is now a double murder. Mr Mullany was flown by air ambulance from the Caribbean at the weekend. His wife’s remains have also returned to Britain.

On Friday, Antigua's police commissioner, Gary Nelson, said he believed the shooting of the couple may be linked to a recent execution-style murder of a Syrian immigrant in Antigua.

He said the shootings appeared to have a similar modus operandi, suggesting that the same brutal gang was responsible. He noted that all eight other murders in Antigua this year took place outside

The island is policed by a 350-strong force that is faced with a rise in crime that has "nearly overwhelmed" the nation, according to its prime minister Baldwin Spencer. He said it has no computers, no crime database and an emergency call system which "sometimes doesn't work".

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