This Briton has spent 27 years in jail for murder. Now Colombian drugs barons admit they did it: The Rolls-Royce-driving socialite sentenced to death for gang hit and the new evidence making a mockery of US justice Krishna Maharaj, 74, was convicted of double murder in 1986 Imprisoned for the slaying of an ex-business associate and his son Five alibi witnesses were not allowed to prove his innocence at trial Now a reformed drugs baron names notorious Medellin hitman as the killer It sounds like the plot of a thriller: a multi-millionaire British socialite whose horses raced against the Queen's is framed for the brutal killings of a father and son - deaths that were, in reality, professional hits ordered and perpetrated by Colombian drug cartels. Now, 27 years after Krishna Maharaj was arrested and jailed in Florida, his lawyers have unearthed sensational new evidence that confirms the story is true. Revealed today by The Mail on Sunday, the evidence - statements from key cartel members who had direct knowledge of the killings - will be presented next month in a Miami court by Maharaj's lawyers, led by Clive Stafford Smith, of human rights charity Reprieve. Kris Maharaj, pictured in court in Miami in 1997, was framed for a double murder by corrupt detectives, according to new documents filed in court Kris's wife Marita, pictured right in Miami with lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, has stood by her husband since his arrest They include sworn evidence from "El Asistente," an enforcer for the infamous Pablo Escobar, whose murderous reign as the Medellin cartel's chief drug lord ended in a shootout with Colombian police in 1993. El Asistente, whose statement describes crucial details of the murders, says: "I am giving this [statement] 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 appals 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. Maharaj once lived a glamorous life. Born and schooled in Trinidad when it was still a British colony, he moved to Peckham, South London, in 1960, where, with the help of a £1,500 loan, he quickly built up a thriving food import business. Maharaj became a fixture of the Swinging London social scene, had many celebrity friends, and was a generous charity donor. New hope: British businessman Krishna Maharaj, 74, pictured with his wife Marita during a recent prison visit, has been imprisoned in Miami for 27 years for a double-murder he says he did not commit 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. The bodies of Derrick and his son Duane were found in room 1215 of the Miami Dupont Plaza Hotel on October 16, 1986. Derrick, 53, had been shot six times. His son, 23, died from a single bullet fired from a gun placed in his mouth as he knelt by the bed. 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. As he told The Mail on Sunday in an interview in prison in August, when the pair died he was suing Derrick Moo Young. "If I'd wanted to kill him, surely I'd have waited until I got my money?" he said. This newspaper has previously revealed some of the holes that have been exposed in the prosecution case. For example, vital witnesses lied, including the late Tino Geddes, who testified that Maharaj's alibi was false. Supposedly an innocent Jamaican journalist, legal documents state that Geddes was a member of the Shower Posse, a Jamaican gang linked to the drug cartels. Arrested for gun-running before Maharaj's trial, Geddes did a deal with prosecutors to avoid going to prison. We also reported earlier this year that former police officers have now come forward to say that corrupt colleagues in the pay of the drug lords fabricated the case against Maharaj to hide the cartels" involvement. Sources say this was part of a pattern - at least one other innocent man was condemned to death and executed. Brutal slayings: Mr Maharaj was sentenced to the electric chair for the shooting of Derrick Moo Young, one of his former business associates, and his son Duane in 1986 But the main subject of the latest evidence is the Moo Youngs. At the trial, they were described as virtually penniless. In reality, they were money-launderers who had fallen out with their cartel paymasters. It was just months after Mr Stafford Smith became Maharaj's lawyer in 1994 that he first 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. However, his relationship with Escobar and the extent of his knowledge of cartel operations have been confirmed by two kingpins Mr 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 Mr Stafford Smith met at a jail in South Carolina, where he is serving a 30-year sentence for trafficking cocaine to the US. "Orejuela was polite, a little reticent," Mr Stafford Smith says. But I made it clear we have no interest in getting anyone else indicted, only in clearing Kris's name. He told me El Asistente had close links with both the Cali and the Medellin cartels, and because of his close relationship with Escobar, he would be by far the best person to say why and how the Moo Youngs were killed. El Asistente says: "I particularly remember the Moo Young name because I always thought of it as moo like a cow." The money they had stolen was "particularly sensitive," he adds, because some of it belonged to other drug lords with whom Escobar sometimes collaborated. The description of the way they ran their financial empire dovetails closely with documents that record it: "Escobar told me the money was entrusted to middlemen to be taken to Switzerland. They were also using a bank in Panama that the Moo Youngs said they or their contacts controlled. Behind bars: Mr Maharaj is serving his 27th year of his life sentence at this correctional facility for elderly prisoners in Miami Florida Better days: Mr Maharaj and wife Marita with one of his beloved Rolls-Royces in London before his conviction of murder El Asistente also names the assassin at the Dupont Plaza - Guillermo Zuluaga, a notorious Medellin hitman known as Cuchilla, which means "the blade." "I know the details about Cuchilla's involvement because he admitted to me that he had done it," El Asistente says. Cuchilla also orchestrated the murder of CIA agent Barry Seal in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to El Asistente. Cuchilla made enough money from his murders to buy a farm in Colombia. But he did not enjoy it for long. In 1993, after the Cali cartel had fallen out with Escobar and was trying to find and murder him, Cali hoodlums kidnapped Cuchilla. He refused to talk. After being tortured for several days, he was pushed - still alive - into a sugar-cane threshing machine. Another man El Asistente names as playing a leading role in the Moo Young murders is Jaime Vallejo Mejia, a smuggler and cartel money-man. Unbeknown to the Maharaj jury, he had checked into another room at the Dupont Plaza when the Moo Youngs died. Astonishingly, Mr Stafford Smith's investigators tracked down Mejia and spoke to him in Colombia. Before being able to do so, they were held at gunpoint for three days, then driven while blindfolded to a secret location. Alleged killers: Colombian drugs baron Pablo Escobar, pictured dressed as a Mexican bandit, was once the head of cartel Medellin to which it is alleged the hitmen belonged Mejia confirmed claims that the murders were committed by the cartels, and that Maharaj had nothing to do with them. The day before their deaths, Mejia had confronted the Moo Youngs and warned them they had better come up with the money they owed. They produced a letter of credit for millions of dollars, drawn on a bank in New York. Mejia and his cartel colleagues used their contacts to check this out. El Asistente says: "The letter of credit turned out to be false. When this was ascertained, the order was given to kill them. Yet however strong the new evidence, prosecutors in Florida are fighting to stop it being properly heard, urging the court to dismiss the appeal without any witnesses being called. Their response to one legal document filed this year by the defence was to claim it was invalid because it was not set out in double-spaced type. The costs of Maharaj's legal battle means he long ago lost almost everything, while Marita, who lives in a humble Fort Lauderdale bungalow, struggles to survive. "But while we have hope we will fight," she says. This can only end in one of two ways: either Kris's death in prison, or his release. But time is running out. Two years ago, Maharaj came close to death after contracting the flesh-eating bug necrotising fasciitis, which has forced him to use a wheelchair. For several years, he had been held in a jail for elderly prisoners in Miami. But earlier this month he was moved to a different site in Florida City, where almost all the other inmates are young, violent men. "He is very bad shape now," Marita says. The new jail is a horrible place. It's so noisy, Kris can't sleep. When I visit him, he can barely keep his eyes open. I have to get up at 3am to be there for an 8am visit because it takes so long for everyone to get through security. Kris used to phone me every day, but now that's become impossible. I tell him, "Don't let them win," but I'm really worried about him. He's very depressed. Last week, Mr Stafford Smith wrote to Foreign Office Minister Hugh Robertson asking the Government to fulfil an old promise on which it later reneged - to grant a £20,000 loan to help fund Maharaj's defence. Reprieve's investigations have cost more than £80,000. He also asked the UK to put pressure on the US and Colombian governments to disclose potentially crucial documents about the killings and the cartels believed to exist in their files, but to which the defence has so far been refused access. The Foreign Office said the loan promise could not be honoured because "our policy has changed." Nor could the Government help obtain the documents: "We must respect US judicial systems, just as we expect them to respect the UK's laws and legal processes. We continue to monitor Mr Maharaj's case and to provide consular support.