Please Release Him

Death Row ordeal of Londoner in jail for 33 years over a crime he didn’t commit... and the heroic efforts of Brit campaigner to free him

- Geraldine Mckelvie

Every Christmas Day, devoted Marita Maharaj sets a place at the table for her husband Kris.

She has carried out the ritual for years, clinging to the hope that he will finally be released from jail for a double murder he did not commit.

But Marita is still waiting at her home in Florida. Kris, now 81, has spent 33 years in jail there – the first 15 on Death Row – after becoming unwittingly embroiled in the violent world of drug lord Pablo Escobar.

He was only spared the electric chair thanks to British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith – founder of the charity Reprieve.

The organisation, which this year celebrates its 20th birthday, has saved over 400 people like Kris from the death penalty across the globe.

It has also helped secure the release of more than 80 detainees from the notorious US detention camp Guantanamo Bay.

But Clive, 60, and his team are still battling to free Kris, who was taken off Death Row and handed a life jail term – after a flaw with his original sentencing was uncovered in 2002.

Intriguingly, Clive’s team have linked the gun killings to Colombian cocaine baron Escobar.

WARS

Kris, of Peckham, South East London, had moved to the US and was running a fruit imports operation in Miami. He was arrested after father and son Derrick and Duane Moo Young were shot dead.

Kris was held after a man said he had witnessed him killing the Jamaican-Chinese pair.