UPDATE: SEVEN HEALTHCARE WORKERS FACE JAIL MARADONA DEATH TRIAL
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Seven medical personnel will stand trial next week on charges of negligence in the final days of Argentine football great Diego Maradona’s life, four years after his death.
Over 100 witnesses, including family members and medical professionals who have treated Maradona over the years, will testify during the four-month trial, which begins Tuesday in the San Isidro area of Buenos Aires.
If found guilty, the seven defendants may spend eight to twenty-five years behind bars.
After fighting alcohol and cocaine addictions for decades, Diego Armando Maradona passed away on November 25, 2020, at the age of 60, while recuperating from brain surgery for a blood clot.
Two weeks after his surgery, he was taken from the hospital and discovered dead in bed in a rented home in a posh area of Buenos Aires.
It was discovered that he passed away from a heart attack.
The night nurse said he had seen some “warning signs” but had “received orders not to wake him up.”
Maradona’s death, which came in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, plunged Argentina into deep mourning.
Tens of thousands of people queued to bid farewell to him as his body lay in state in the presidential palace.
Neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, psychologist Carlos Diaz, medical coordinator Nancy Forlini, nursing coordinator Mariano Perroni, doctor Pedro Pablo Di Spagna and nurse Ricardo Almiro will all stand trial next week.
Another nurse, Gisela Dahiana Madrid, asked to be tried by jury separately.
Her trial is set for July.
Prosecutors have accused the medical professionals of providing “reckless” and “deficient” home treatment to Maradona, alleging he was abandoned to his fate for a “prolonged, agonizing period” before his death.
A panel of 20 medical experts convened by Argentina’s public prosecutor concluded in 2021 that Maradona “would have had a better chance of survival” with adequate treatment in an appropriate medical facility.
The investigating magistrate in the case said each of the accused played a role in the events.
The accused all deny any responsibility in the star’s death.
Vadim Mischanchuk, lawyer for the psychiatrist Cosachov, said he was very optimistic of an acquittal given that his client was in charge of Maradona’s mental rather than physical health.
Maradona’s family claim that leaked audio and text messages show that the star’s health was in imminent danger, Mario Baudry, a lawyer for Maradona’s son Dieguito, said.
He said that the messages showed the medical team’s strategy was to try to ensure that Diego’s daughters did not intervene “because if they did, they (the medical staff) would lose their money.”
Maradona is immortalized in countless murals, statues and exhibitions across Argentina, as well as in the tattoos sported by his legions of fans.
He will also soon have a mausoleum on a 1,000-square-metre site in the heart of Buenos Aires.
“We want our father to be close to the love of the people,” his daughter Dalma Maradona said in a video presentation of the site, which is expected to receive up to a million visitors a year and will be free of charge for Argentines.
AFP
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