Alleged amnesiac faces fraud charges

A Briton who claimed amnesia when he turned up at a police station five years after he went missing while canoeing in the North Sea has been arrested on suspicion of faking his death so his wife could collect insurance money.

John Darwin, a former prison officer, had been declared dead when his canoe’s wreckage washed ashore, and his reappearance has become front-page news.

The Daily Mirror said Darwin and wife Anne were seen together after his disappearance, and printed a photograph it said shows the couple standing in a Panama City apartment they rented last year.

The Sun quoted Anne Darwin as saying she claimed the insurance benefits “in good faith when I believed I had lost my husband.”