MURDER charges have been laid against two men accused of killing an illegal immigrant whose body was found in a North Yorkshire canal.

Bao Lung Huang, 44, from Fujian, in China and Zhouli Zhang, 49, from Dong Bei, in China, will appear before York Magistrates Court at 10am today over the killing of Chinese national Cai Guan Chen.

Police have also released this photograph of Mr Guan Chen who was also from Fujian, China and was living in the UK under his assumed name of Bing Lin.

His body was discovered in Selby Canal, near the A19 between Burn and Brayton, almost eight months ago by an off-duty policeman who was fishing nearby.

Police believe the 38-year-old victim, who had been living in the UK illegally since 2001, may have been in the river for two or three weeks before his body was discovered on March 20.

It took almost six weeks after the discovery of his body for him to be named as detectives searched for clues as to his identity and where he came from.

The discovery of Mr Guan Chen’s body happened the same weekend as police launched a search for missing York chef Claudia Lawrence, landing North Yorkshire Police with two of its biggest cases in years.

Police launched a television appeal and a multi-lingual poster campaign for information, together with a computer-generated image of what he might have looked like.

Appeal posters were handed out in Asian communities in North, South and West Yorkshire, Humberside and Liverpool, Manchester and London, with Oriental businesses – including restaurants and supermarkets - displaying the posters in their windows which had an appeal for information in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Vietnamese.

It is thought Mr Guan Chen lived in numerous locations around the UK and that his last known address was in London.

In April, officers swooped on a semi-detached house in Heslington Lane, and in July a man was arrested and questioned over Mr Guan Chen’s death Since then, there have been no publicised developments in the police investigation into how the man, who had suffered severe head injuries, was killed.

Detectives investigating his death are asking for anyone who knew Mr Guan Chen or has information about his murder to phone them on 0845 60 60 247 or Crimestoppers can be contacted on 0800 555 111.