Maradona medical team on trial four years after football icon’s death
The long-awaited trial of medical staff treating late Argentine football legend Diego Maradona has begun in the capital Buenos Aires.
Maradona was 60 when she died of a heart attack in her home in 2020. He recovered from home earlier that month in a cerebral blood clot.
Prosecutors claimed Maradona’s death was avoidable and blamed the hospital staff for negligence.
The defendant said Maradona refused further treatment and should stay in the hospital for longer after the operation.
If the charge is a “possible homicide case” they are at risk of eight to 25 years of prison terms.
Prosecutors said in an opening remark that it intends to present “reliable” evidence that no one on the team does what they should do in “the horror theater” and that was Maradona’s dead bed.
“Today, Diego Armando Maradona, his children, his relatives, the people closest to him and the justice that Argentine deserves,” prosecutor Patricio Ferrari told the court.
Investigators classified the case as a criminal murder, a crime similar to involuntary murder, as they said the defendant was aware of the seriousness of Maradona’s health but did not take the necessary steps to save him.
The defendants in the case are neurosurgeons, psychiatrists, psychologists, medical coordinators, nursing coordinators, doctors and night nurses.
Nurse Night had previously said that he had seen a “warning signal” but received an order to “not wake up” Maradona.
More than 100 witnesses will testify at the trial, which is expected to last until July.
Diego Maradona is largely considered one of the greatest footballers of all time. When Argentina won the 1986 World Cup football match, he was the captain, scoring the famous “Hand of God” against England in the quarter-finals.
In the second half of his career, Maradona fought cocaine addiction and was banned for 15 months after testing positive for the drug in 1991.
The news of his death has put the football world and his native Argentina in deep mourning, as thousands lined up for hours, walking past his coffin next to the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.
