Kris Maharaj: Body of man who died in Florida jail to return to UK

Mr Stafford Smith said: “I went down to Medellín a couple of times and six members of the cartel said ‘we’re the ones who did this.’

“We gradually exposed everyone in the case as being involved in drugs, except for Kris.

“Even the first judge was taken away in handcuffs because he had tried to take a bribe from an officer posing as a cartel [member].

“I’ve done 400 or so death penalty cases over the years and, of all the cases, this is the most unjust.

“He was in a cell with 80 other men – it was an octogenarian retirement home, effectively, of a really horrible sort.

“He had a 3ft-wide (91cm) bed and another 3ft before the next bed.

“He couldn’t read any more, he was blind. The only joy he had left in life was to get on the phone with Marita for five minutes each day. It was so, so sad.”

Mrs Maharaj came to live in Bridport in March after spending decades in the US to be near her husband.

She said, in all that time, she always laid a place for him at the dinner table.

“Maybe it was silly of me but I always hoped he will come through the door,” she said.

“I never thought that Kris would die. I always thought that, for at least even a short time, we would be together before we both die.

“I didn’t know he was very sick. When Clive told me that he was dead I went completely crazy, because that was a shock.”