Mohammed Sabir Raja's death was no accident. The 62-year-old grandfather was stabbed six times and blasted in the face with a shotgun at point-blank range.

Calling out to his two grandsons, his last words were: "These are Hoogstraten's men. They have hit me. They have hit me."

But he was wrong. The police were wrong. The Crown Prosecution Service was wrong. The judge was wrong. And having been misdirected, the jury was wrong.

Violent robbers David Croke and Robert Knapp were sentenced to life imprisonment for the slum landlord's murder.

Knapp had a long association with Mr Hoogstraten, who was involved in a bitter multi-million-pound legal dispute with Mr Raja.

Croke's DNA evidence was found at the scene and prosecutors linked Croke to Knapp to Mr Hoogstraten whom, they argued, had the motive for the killing.

After a three-month trial, he was found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for ten years.

But his conviction was quashed in July 2003 after it was ruled the jury were misdirected by trial judge, Mr Justice Newman - a respected civil court judge who had less experience with major criminal cases.

The jurors had been told to convict Mr Hoogstraten if they were sure he sent Croke and Knapp to visit Mr Raja but not to kill him or cause him serious harm.

Mr Hoogstraten's legal team argued he would also have had to have known the pair would arrive at Mulgrave Road, Sutton, with a loaded firearm. This was not explicitly put to the jury.

The tycoon's friend and legal advisor Giovanni di Stefano, who has represented Serbian warlord Arkan, described Mr Hoogstraten as a good man who would do anything for his children.

He said: "He is still close to his former wives and girlfriends and how many people can say that?"

Mr Raja was one of Brighton and Hove's most notorious landlords with almost 100 convictions for health and safety violations. But he was devoted to his family and had three daughters and three sons,.

He arrived in Brighton in 1962 from his native Pakistan, buying his first property in 1967.

Mr Hoogstraten considered Mr Raja "a maggot" but helped him finance a number of property deals.

The Rajas claimed Mr Hoogstraten owed them millions, while he said the matter amounted to "peanuts". It came to a head with Mr Raja suing for fraud. Two months later he was dead.