The Dutch high court has ordered the retrial of a man jailed for the murder of a record producer in 1981, and it could be the sixth miscarriage of justice since 2000.

Martien Hunnik was jailed in 1983 for shooting dead Bart van der Laar in his villa in Hilversum in what has become known as the ‘showbiz murder’. Van der Laar was a successful music producer in the 1970s with artists such as Luv, Babe and Benny Neyman.

Two years after the murder, Hunnik was arrested and convicted on the basis of a confession he made but later retracted. He was released from jail in 1990.

Hunnik then tried to get hold of his file and when he was refused, his lawyer and the public prosecutor requested a new trial. Last year it became apparent that Hunnik is probably innocent. Two people known to Van der Laar most likely killed him on the orders of a business partner, experts say.

Susceptible

In addition, medical experts now say that Hunnik was ‘very susceptible to suggestions’ and inclined to exaggerate at the time of his confession. If the judges had known this at the time of his trial, he would probably have been acquitted, according to the high court.

If Hunnik is found not quilty at his retrial, it will be the sixth major miscarriage of justice in the Netherlands since 2000.

Among the other cases are Lucia de Berk, the nurse who was jailed for life in 2006 for murdering seven patients and the attempted murder of three more, and Wilco Viets and Herman du Bois who completed seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for the rape and murder of an air hostess in Putten in 1994.