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. ||||| Lawyers representing Krishna Maharaj, a British businessman who has spent the past 27 years in a Florida prison for a double murder that they say he did not commit, released on Friday details of the 53 witnesses and 498 documents they plan to call on in the hope of persuading a judge to order a retrial. 
 
 
 
 Next Wednesday, the 11th judicial circuit court of Florida in Miami will set a date for a full evidentiary hearing into the Maharaj case. The hearing will constitute his greatest chance in almost three decades to prove his innocence for the murders of his business partner Derrick Moo Young and Young’s son Duane in the Dupont Plaza hotel in Miami on 16 October 1986. 
 
 Maharaj, 75, was sentenced to death in 1987, and though he was taken off death row in 2002 he was resentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently held in a prison in south Florida. 
 
 The newly released documents underline the massive case for exoneration that has been built up by Maharaj’s lawyers. One of them, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal support group Reprieve, who has written a book on the case, The Injustice System: A Murder in Miami and a Trial Gone Wrong, told the Guardian: “Kris Maharaj is so patently innocent that it is unimaginable to me that the state of Florida does not let him go. It is a very sad day when the government desperately wants to keep the wrong person in prison, such that they will not even investigate who the real killers are.” 
 
 In his bid for a retrial, the Trinidad-born Maharaj asserts that he was framed as the murderer to help cover up the involvement of Colombian drug cartels in the killings. The prisoner will present the court with evidence that the victims had been laundering huge sums for the Medellin drug cartel. 
 
 Among the witnesses to be called at the evidentiary hearing will be six people who can testify that Maharaj was 30 miles away from the Dupont Plaza hotel when the murders happened. Further testimony will be provided alleging that another named individual carried out the killings, and illuminating the motive for him doing so. 
 
 Other witnesses will be called to support allegations of perjury by key state witnesses at Maharaj’s trial. 
 
 The newly disclosed list of witnesses the lawyers intend to call at the full evidentiary hearing also includes several investigators and attorneys involved in the case, fingerprint experts and former Miami police officers. Among the pile of documents to be presented are some allegedly demonstrating drug dealing and money laundering by the Youngs and records from the hotel. 
 
 The case is being considered by Judge William Thomas. Ordering a full evidentiary hearing on 24 April, he stated that Maharaj would be granted a new trial if he could persuade the court that the new evidence that will be presented at the full hearing was of “such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial”. 
 
 Lawyers for the state have claimed much of the new material is hearsay and inadmissible in any new trial. The judge said he would take a view on admissibility at the evidentiary hearing. ||||| 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.
– 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.)