Kevon Felmine

For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is ex­pect­ed meet this week with lawyers for his broth­er, Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj, in Mi­a­mi fol­low­ing re­ports that new ev­i­dence giv­en by a for­mer Columbian drug baron could pos­si­bly over­turn his dou­ble mur­der con­vic­tion.

Af­ter spend­ing 27 years in a Flori­da pen­i­ten­tiary, Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj, a 74-year-old British cit­i­zen, could walk free af­ter be­ing sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of his Ja­maican busi­ness part­ner Der­rick Moo Young and his 23-year-old son Du­ane. Moo Young, 55, was shot six times while Du­ane was shot once in the face at the Mi­a­mi Dupont Plaza Ho­tel on Oc­to­ber 16, 1988.

In his fi­nal ap­peal next month, Ma­haraj's lawyers plan to present a sworn state­ment from El Asis­tente, a for­mer hench­man of late drug king­pin Pablo Es­cabar, which im­pli­cates the Medellin Car­tel in the Moo Youngs' mur­der.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said al­though he does not have all the de­tails of this new ev­i­dence, his fam­i­ly was hap­py to hear that Kr­ish­na might be freed. Ma­haraj, who is va­ca­tion­ing with his son in the Cay­man Is­lands, said he will be fly­ing out to Mi­a­mi to­day where he will meet Kr­ish­na's lawyer to dis­cuss the fi­nal ap­peal hear­ing.

"Kris has al­ways main­tained that he was in­no­cent and it's be­cause of his poor le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the tri­al he was con­vict­ed. There have been a lot of peo­ple from Eng­land and Amer­i­ca who have claimed that he was in­no­cent. I have spo­ken to his lawyers and they have al­ways main­tained that one day he will be free be­cause of the ev­i­dence which they are in­ves­ti­gat­ing to show that he did not com­mit those crimes.

"It has been a long le­gal bat­tle but I was very hap­py when I heard that there has been not on­ly a wit­ness, but even the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors have giv­en ev­i­dence to show that he is not guilty."The Unit­ed King­don's Dai­ly Mail re­port­ed yes­ter­day that El Asis­tente's state­ment gave spe­cif­ic de­tails of the mur­ders, say­ing it was a pro­fes­sion­al hit on the Moo Youngs who were laun­der­ing mon­ey from drug car­tels. He named Medellin as­sas­sin Guiller­mo "Cuchilla" Zu­lu­a­ga as the mur­der­er.

Part of El Asis­tente state­ment said: "I am giv­ing this be­cause I have re­con­nect­ed with my re­li­gious faith. The idea that Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj has served more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry in prison for a crime I know he did not com­mit ap­palls me. I want to set the record straight and en­sure he gets jus­tice."Next month's hear­ing is Ma­haraj's fi­nal chance to ap­peal. His orig­i­nal death sen­tence was over­turned at an ear­li­er ap­peal in 2003. About to turn 75, his ear­li­est pos­si­ble re­lease date is cur­rent­ly 2040.

The Dai­ly Mail al­so re­port­ed that sev­er­al for­mer po­lice of­fi­cers have been pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence that their cor­rupt col­leagues had "fab­ri­cat­ed the case against Ma­haraj to hide the car­tels' in­volve­ment".

Just months af­ter Clive Stafford Smith, of the hu­man rights char­i­ty Re­prieve, be­came Ma­haraj's lawyer in 1994 he dis­cov­ered cru­cial doc­u­ments which had been hid­den all along in po­lice files. They re­vealed that at the time of their deaths, the Moo Youngs were ne­go­ti­at­ing to buy a Pana­man­ian bank for �400 mil­lion and were in­volved in bond deals worth �3 bil­lion.

Analy­sis of their fi­nan­cial records by ac­coun­tants Ernst & Young states the Moo Youngs' re­al busi­ness was mon­ey-laun­der­ing–on a mind-bog­gling scale. But rich as they were, the analy­sis says, they were al­so greedy, skim­ming an ex­tra one per cent from every deal they did for their car­tel clients.

That ap­peared to be a much more plau­si­ble rea­son for the mur­ders than Ma­haraj's miss­ing �300,000. Now, fol­low­ing fur­ther en­quiries by Re­prieve in the US and Colom­bia, the the­o­ry has been cor­rob­o­rat­ed by car­tel mem­bers them­selves."Es­co­bar com­plained di­rect­ly to me that the Moo Youngs had stolen his mon­ey and that of his part­ners and had to die," El Asis­tente says un­der oath. We can­not re­veal his true iden­ti­ty, nor the cir­cum­stances of his in­ter­view.

"There are a num­ber of peo­ple who I know in­tend to kill me," he says.His re­la­tion­ship with Es­co­bar and the ex­tent of his knowl­edge of car­tel op­er­a­tions have been con­firmed by two king­pins Stafford Smith in­ter­viewed in US pris­ons. One is a top Medellin boss who can­not yet be named. The oth­er is Miguel Ro­driguez-Ore­juela, 69, a leader of the ri­val Cali car­tel, whom Stafford Smith met at a jail in South Car­oli­na, where he is serv­ing a 30-year sen­tence for traf­fick­ing co­caine to the US.

Kr­ish­na's at­tor­ney Stafford found key state­ments about the Moo Youngs' deal­ing with the car­tels which had been hid­den. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said he does not be­lieve there was a cov­er-up in the US ju­di­cial sys­tem to pin the mur­der on his broth­er.

"I won't say there was a cov­er up but I would say in any so­ci­ety where the po­lice have made an er­ror, it is al­ready very dif­fi­cult for them to ad­mit an er­ror so I think that is all part and par­cel. That is how the le­gal sys­tem op­er­ates. As a lawyer I see this op­er­ate in Trinidad. There are peo­ple who claim that they are not guilty and ul­ti­mate­ly are found not to be guilty.

"My broth­er has suf­fered a lot of in­ci­dents in the prison, he is not is good health. My oth­er broth­er saw him re­cent­ly and he is very frail. The fam­i­ly is hap­py about the news and I plan to go see him but you have to arrange vis­its as there are lim­it­ed vis­its to fam­i­ly mem­bers. I plan to see him but I would prob­a­bly have to go back to Mi­a­mi lat­er this year."

Kr­ish­na mi­grat­ed to Eng­land in 1960 where he es­tab­lished a suc­cess­ful food im­port com­pa­ny and lat­er owned Britain's sec­ond largest sta­ble. IHe be­came quite a pop­u­lar in Lon­don's lime­light and gained many celebri­ty friends.He loved col­lect­ing Rolls-Royces–he usu­al­ly owned four at a time–but Ma­haraj's great­est pas­sion was race­hors­es. At one time, he owned 110 � the sec­ond-biggest sta­ble in Britain.

In 1974, the year he met and mar­ried his wife, Mari­ta, a Por­tuguese banker, his horse King Lev­anstell won the pres­ti­gious Queen Alexan­dra Stakes at Roy­al As­cot, de­feat­ing a thor­ough­bred owned by the Queen.The fate­ful path that led Ma­haraj to death row start­ed when he be­gan to in­vest in prop­er­ty in the 1980s. He formed a busi­ness with Der­rick Moo Young, os­ten­si­bly a re­spectable Flori­da busi­ness­man. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj says he soon dis­cov­ered that Moo Young had em­bez­zled �300,000 from the firm they set up.

Ma­haraj has al­ways in­sist­ed that he was hav­ing lunch 30 miles away at the time–an al­i­bi sup­port­ed by five wit­ness­es, who, in­ex­plic­a­bly, were nev­er called to tes­ti­fy at his tri­al. But his fin­ger­prints were in room 1215.The rea­son, he has al­ways main­tained, was that he had been let in­to the room to at­tend a busi­ness meet­ing there ear­li­er that day. But the man he was wait­ing for did not turn up, so he left.

The pros­e­cu­tion claimed Ma­haraj's dis­pute over the �300,000 was mo­tive for the mur­ders–a claim he an­gri­ly de­nies. In an in­ter­view in prison in Au­gust, he said: "If I'd want­ed to kill him, sure­ly I'd have wait­ed un­til I got my mon­ey?"Kr­ish­na's sto­ry is doc­u­ment­ed in a book ti­tled In­jus­tice writ­ten by one of his lawyers, Clyde Stafford.