MICHAELA MCAREAVEY’S REMAINS are to be flown home tonight, accompanied by her family and husband John for a funeral next week, RTÉ reports.

Michaela was found dead in the bath of her hotel room by her husband on Monday. The two had married on 30 December in Tyrone, and checked into the Mauritian hotel on Saturday.

Last night, two of the three men charged over the murder were reported to have confessed to the crime.

Employees at the Legends Hotel where Michaela and her husband were honeymooning, Avinash Treebhoowoon, 28, and Sandip Moneea, 41, have been charged with murder. If found guilty, they could face 45 years in prison.

A local journalist told Irish media that Treeboowoon had admitted fighting with Michaela in her room, before strangling her.

Treeboowoon, a room attendant at the Legends Hotel, had claimed in court earlier yesterday that he was roughly treated by Mauritian police during questioning.

A third man who is also a hotel employee, Raj Theekoy who is accused of conspiracy to murder, has made a statement to police implicating Treebhoowoon and Moneea, the BBC reports. The three men have been remanded in custody to appear in court again on 19 January.

Police have told the PA that skin tissue found under Michaela’s fingerprints could prove crucial in the case and is currently being analysed.

“Totally devastated”

John McAreavey spoke about the death for the first time yesterday, saying he had been left “totally devastated” by the loss of his “best friend” and “rock”, Michaela.  He said:

Words have no meaning. I can’t describe in words how lost I feel as Michaela is not just the light of my life – she is my life.

My beautiful wife, my best friend, my rock Michaela, has been taken from me and I still can’t take it in.

McAreavey and members of Michaela’s family will accompany her remains back to Ireland for a funeral at St Malachy’s Church next week, the church she was married in less than two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, RTÉ’s Morning Ireland reports that Mauritian officials have held a crisis meeting to look at ways to minimise the damage to the economy. The country’s tourism minister had earlier said such a crime had never happened there before, and the island was very safe for tourists.

The murder rate is very low in Mauritius (in 2008, it stood at around 2 murders per 100,000 persons), but local media reports that crime has overall been increasing and the police commissioner has set a target of 3% reduction in murders for 2011.