MIAMI (AP) — A British businessman imprisoned for 30 years for two killings at a Miami hotel will get a new chance to prove his innocence. 
 
 The attorney for 78-year-old Kris Maharaj said Tuesday a federal judge will consider his claims that new evidence shows the killings were actually committed by members of Pablo Escobar's Medellin cocaine cartel. Several other judges have previously upheld Maharaj's conviction. 
 
 Maharaj is serving a life sentence for the slayings of Derrick and Duane Moo Young, who were gunned down in a Miami hotel room in 1986. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently granted Maharaj the right to pursue his innocence claims anew based on recently discovered evidence showing the Medellin cartel's involvement. 
 
 Maharaj attorney Clive Stafford Smith says the hearing will center on this evidence. ||||| Compelling new evidence suggests Pablo Escobar's drug cartel carried out the double killing for which Kris Maharaj was convicted 
 
 Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) 
 
 Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) 
 
 Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) 
 
 THE wife of a Brit jailed for a double murder linked to Colombian drug lords has vowed she will never leave his side as his gruelling campaign for justice extends beyond three decades. 
 
 Compelling new evidence suggests Krishna Maharaj, now 78, may be innocent of the Miami killings for which he was imprisoned in 1987. 
 
 Reuters 9 Krishna Maharaj, also known as Kris, has spent almost 31 years in a Florida jail for a crime he says he did not commit 
 
 Reprieve 9 His wife Marita (pictured together) has remained by his side and has vowed to continue fighting for his release 
 
 Incredibly, members of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel – including the drug lord’s own right-hand man – have since come forward to state Mr Maharaj was framed. 
 
 And at the time, dozens of crooked cops, politicians and judges were on the payroll of Medellin gangsters who were flooding the city with cocaine. 
 
 MOST READ IN NEWS ‘KILL THEM WHERE YOU FIND THEM’ Pro-ISIS group draws list of targets - including Trump and names and addresses of Brits SLEAZY SQUADDIES X-rated pictures of girls taken back to British Army barracks for sex are being shared online ANIMAL PORN SHAME Star of Channel 5's Can't Pay We'll Take It Away has conviction for making vile movie with a dog LAST OF THE HEADHUNTERS Meet the Indian tribe who are STILL rewarded for bringing back heads of their enemies in battle BIG BOTHER Your smartphone apps are 'secretly colluding' to spy on you in terrifying detail, researchers warn STUCK IN A MUDDLE WITH YOU Cheating couple wheeled through street to hospital 'after boyfriend gets stuck INSIDE married lover' in hotel romp Fuelling the fire Government told us diesel cars were green and cheap, but now ours may cost the family £160 extra A WEEK, say fuming drivers rout of order Moment Royal Navy patrol boat chases huge Spanish ship out of British waters off Gibraltar as tensions rise 48 hours after 'war' row TUPAC 'TRUTH revealed' Tupac murder mystery has finally been solved in new documentary, rap mogul Suge Knight claims DOG RAMPAGE Devil dog owner shouts to his family as he is led to the cells from court after being accused of allowing terrifying bulldog rampage that saw two people bitten in street up yours senors! Gibraltar's First Minister backs Sun campaign to keep Spain and EU off Our Rock BEYOND EVIL Sterilised mum gets partner to rape her daughter, 12, to get her pregnant so they can raise child as their own CARRIAGE CARNAGE Horrifying images show devastation left when 'suicide bomber' blew himself up killing 14 others in St Petersburg metro carriage 'Why is she smiling so much?' Brave wife of US tourist killed in Westminster terror attack is targeted by sick trolls ‘KILL KIM BEFORE HE KILLS YOU!’ North Korea’s top defector says the only way West can stop Kim Jong-un is to NUKE him CHARLIE'S LAST CHANCE Mum breaks down at High Court as US doctor offering £1.2m treatment for baby Charlie Gard admits his chances are 'vanishingly small' as parents battle to stop life support being turned off HOUSE OF HORRORS Property where Jo Cox killer Thomas Mair plotted her murder being renovated before going back on sale the knives are out Chilling scene of knives stuck in a staircase met by cops on domestic assault call out Suited and Booted Austin Reed to cut 1,000 jobs as 116-yr-old men’s store shuts up shop on high street 'I'VE HAD 5 PARTNERS YOUR AGE' Perv snared by paedo hunters after sending barrage of sick texts to '14-year-old girl' then turning up to meet her with a bag of sex toys 
 
 His wife Marita, 78, told The Sun Online she hoped she would one day be reunited with Kris to live out their last remaining years together in peace. 
 
 Her comments come just a day after US authorities granted Kris a new hearing based on the emerging evidence. 
 
 She said: “When I saw him in jail for the first time, I told him: ‘Don’t worry, I will not leave you. I came with you and I will leave with you. I love you and I will never turn my back on you’. 
 
 “Whatever happens I will be with him. I don’t think he would survive without me by him. 
 
 “I fell in love with him the first day I saw him and I think he fell in love with me too. 
 
 “He was the best husband you could ever meet in your life. How could I turn my back on him? Today he is nothing like he was because he is an old man, like I’m an old woman.” 
 
 Marita Maharaj 9 The pair have been married since 1976 and hope Kris’s appeal will be successful so they can spend their last remaining years together 
 
 Kris’s campaign hit a new low last week when Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, refused to formally accept his legal team’s request for support. 
 
 Through his lawyers at Reprieve, Kris said he had lived a fortunate life but it turned into a living “hell” in 1987. 
 
 “I would have been dead long ago if it were not for Marita and Reprieve. What I long for now is to be living (back) in England, in the countryside.” 
 
 Marita added: “I tell you what I’d like – somewhere nice and quiet, away from crowds. I want a peaceful life. I don’t care where or how. I don’t wish for anything – I had things when I was younger. 
 
 Reprieve 9 Marita says she was never called to give evidence during his initial trial – but she was actually WITH Kris at the time he is said to have committed the murders 
 
 “I know that God will not let him stay there. I know God will bring him home. We are coming to the end of our lives and we need some time together. 
 
 “I would be happy with a few years with Kris. I have hope and I believe that we will be going home. 
 
 “We have survived because of him (God) and I survived because of the generosity of others and I’ve been helped a lot.” 
 
 During the 1980s, Miami was a hotbed of crime, corruption and cocaine where kickbacks and bribes were regularly handed out to cops, judges and politicians. 
 
 BBC 9 He was convicted of killing Derrick and Duane Moo Young (pictured) over a business deal gone wrong 
 
 BBC 9 But recent evidence suggests they were killed in the apartment (pictured) by members of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel over a drug debt 
 
 This was fuelled by cocaine which was skyrocketing in popularity among the Miami elite and clubgoers. 
 
 Awash with drug money, at one point 10 percent of all the Miami police force had to be fired due to corruption. 
 
 And with copious amounts of the drug sourced from Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel swamping Miami streets, gangsters soon exerted huge influence over the city. 
 
 This has formed the backbone of Kris’s appeals after his lawyers tore holes in the original prosecution case and argued two Medellin gangsters were responsible for the killings. 
 
 AP:Associated Press 9 Kris almost died in jail last year and he says he dreams of spending his last remaining years living a quiet life in the English countryside 
 
 Kris was convicted for the killing of father and son Derrick and Duane Moo Young, two men with whom he had a business dispute. 
 
 But his defence team has unearthed SIX different witnesses who said Escobar’s gangsters killed the two men due to unpaid debts. 
 
 Among those was Escobar’s favoured executioner John Jairo “Popeye” Velásquez Vásquez, who has personally said Kris was “framed” for the killings. 
 
 His lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said: “We now have no fewer than six cartel associates saying they did the murder for which Kris Maharaj was originally sentenced to death. 
 
 AP:Associated Press 9 He has been represented by Reprieve for numerous appeals, none of which have been successful 
 
 “The injustice Kris has faced for three decades is why he and I are both so upset that Boris Johnson refused to intervene on his behalf. After all, what is a British passport for?” 
 
 Yesterday a US appeals court ruled a new hearing would be held based on the new evidence which suggests Kris’s innocence. 
 
 Mr Stafford Smith added: “We still have a long way to go, as we need to force disclosure of the rest of the evidence the government has held all these years. 
 
 “But it is a great day for Kris, and I hope now we will finally get him the justice he has long been denied.” 
 
 A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said it had provided support to Mr Maharaj for a number of years. 
 
 “We last visited him on 16 March and have raised our concerns about his health at senior levels within the US government on numerous occasions.” 
 
 Reprieve 9 This letter from Boris Johnson denied Kris’s legal team’s request for his diplomatic support 
 
 KRIS MAHARAJ'S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE Cops claimed Kris arranged a meeting with Derrick Moo Young and Duane Young in a Miami hotel room then shot them both to death. Kris, a wealthy food importer and horse owner from London, had business dealings with the pair and had become embroiled in a financial dispute with them. His appeal team would later claim this made him the “perfect” fall guy for their murders. Witnesses who could place Kris 25 miles away from the killing – including his wife, who said she was actually with him when the murders were committed – were not called to testify. Kris was then convicted and sentenced to death. In the following years, appeals led to the overturning of his death sentence but he was resentenced to life in imprisonment. Since then, even more substantive evidence been unearthed – including from Pablo Escobar’s feared executioner, Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez. Two years ago, he called a former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent and asked him to testify at one of Kris’s appeals on his behalf. The court heard ex ageny Henry Cuervo say: “Velásquez said he wanted to clear his conscience, he wanted to say who had killed the Moo Youngs. He said it was Pablo Escobar and his people.” Incredibly, this was still not enough to overturn Kris’s conviction. Today he remains in jail, despite spending a brief amount of time at an infirmary after almost dying from a flesh-eating disease last year. 
 
 We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. ||||| Image copyright Reprieve Image caption Krishna Maharaj, also known as Kris, has long maintained his innocence 
 
 A British man will have a chance to win his freedom after more than 30 years in a Florida jail. 
 
 A US appeals court on Tuesday granted a new hearing for Kris Maharaj, 78, who has been jailed for more than 30 years for a 1986 double murder in Miami. 
 
 The ruling means that Maharaj's lawyers will be able to present new evidence which they say proves the two men were killed by members of a drug cartel. 
 
 His lawyer claims a Colombian hit man killed Derrick and Duane Moo Young. 
 
 Maharaj's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith from human-rights organisation Reprieve, applauded the decision, saying "it is a great day for Kris, and I hope now we will finally get him the justice he has long been denied". 
 
 But a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office, Ed Griffith, told BBC News: "We stand by the outcome of the very lengthy and fair evidentiary hearing that Maharaj received in the state court, where the judge found these witnesses and/or claims to not be credible or have any merit." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Maharaj's lawyers argue the drug baron Pablo Escobar ordered the murders 
 
 The defence team plans to present new evidence from six cartel associates to argue that the two men, who were business partners of Maharaj, were killed after members of Pablo Escobar's Medellin drugs cartel caught them embezzling laundered drug money. 
 
 The new ruling from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta says "new evidence" would demonstrate that Maharaj could not have been found guilty of the Moo Young murders "beyond a reasonable doubt". 
 
 The judgment adds that the statements by the witnesses, which include Escobar's preferred hit man John Jairo "Popeye" Velasque, "independently corroborate one another". 
 
 They will also present evidence that one hotel guest on the night of the murders, Jaime Vallejo Mejia, was a member of the drug cartel. 
 
 The former businessman, who has been in poor health, had been on death row for 15 years but had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment in 2002. ||||| Attorney says 77-year-old, who has maintained his innocence for 30 years after being convicted of a double murder, could soon die without treatment 
 
 Krishna Maharaj, a British national who has maintained his innocence over more than 30 years of incarceration in a Florida prison, is being denied emergency medical care, according to his lawyer, and could die very soon as a result. 
 
 
 
 “This is dreadful stuff. They almost had to amputate his leg last time and this time it will kill him,” his attorney Clive Stafford Smith told the Guardian. 
 
 Maharaj has contracted necrotizing fasciitis, sometimes described as “flesh-eating bacteria”, at least twice since his incarceration due to what Stafford Smith described as “horrific” sanitation conditions in South Florida Reception Center prison near Miami, where he is being held. Maharaj’s supporters, including his wife, Marita Sabino-Maharaj, are concerned that Maharaj, 77, cannot survive another bout with the skin disease without immediate and aggressive medical care. 
 
 “I am desperately worried about Kris. He is asking for the [UK] government to call the Florida government officials in Tallahassee so that they will send him to the hospital at once,” Sabino-Maharaj said in a statement. 
 
 Maharaj was convicted of a double murder of a father and son in Miami in 1986 and was initially sentenced to the death penalty before the sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2002. Since his trial, Maharaj has maintained that he was framed for the killing by the cartel of the notorious Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. 
 
 In 2015, Maharaj was denied a retrial in the case despite the fact that a chief lieutenant and assassin who worked for Escobar was willing to testify to the cartel’s involvement. 
 
 The victims, Derrick Moo Young and his son Duane, allegedly owed Maharaj, a multimillionaire and one of the UK’s richest men, $400,000 in relation to a property deal. Prosecutors said this motive, coupled with physical evidence such as Maharaj’s fingerprints in the Moo Young’s hotel room, constituted proof of his guilt. 
 
 Reprieve, a UK-based legal defense organization that has been advocating for Maharaj, is prepared to file what will probably be his last appeal next Monday. On Thursday, Reprieve renewed its calls for the UK government to file a brief on Maharaj’s behalf requesting a new trial, a request the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has previously declined. 
 
 The last time Maharaj fell ill with the debilitating skin infection in 2010, Reprieve accused the Florida department of corrections of acting with “sloth” to provide Maharaj with care, to the point where he nearly lost his life. The organization accused the department of refusing to tell his wife or anyone else where he was or the status of his condition. 
 
 “The history of medical malpractice in the Florida prison system is shocking,” Stafford Smith said. “If [Maharaj] dies, we’ll sue them, but I don’t want that to be the case. I want to keep him alive.” 
 
 The Florida department of corrections did not respond to a request for comment.
– Krishna Maharaj has maintained his innocence over the 30 years he's spent in a Florida prison. Now he'll get the chance to prove it. Based on fresh evidence, an appeals court has granted a new hearing for the British businessman convicted of the 1986 killings of Derrick and Duane Moo Young in a Miami hotel room, reports the AP. Maharaj, whose fingerprints were found inside the hotel room, has claimed he was framed for the murders of the father and son, who owed him $400,000 from a property deal, the Guardian reported in January. He says the killings were actually ordered by Pablo Escobar after members of his Medellin drug cartel caught the Moo Youngs embezzling laundered money, reports the BBC. Maharaj's lawyer now says six cartel associates—including one of Escobar's favorite hit men, John Jairo "Popeye" Velasque—claim responsibility for the murders, per the Sun. However, a rep for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office says a judge previously "found these witnesses and/or claims to not be credible or have any merit." Earlier this year, Maharaj's lawyer said the 78-year-old was near death, suffering from a "flesh eating bacteria" as a result of "horrific" conditions at South Florida Reception Center, where he's serving a life sentence. Says Maharaj's wife of 41 years: "I know God will bring him home. We are coming to the end of our lives and we need some time together." (Colombia got pretty annoyed with this rapper after his stunt at Escobar's tomb.)