SAN ISIDRO.- The defense requested this Tuesday the acquittal of the psychologist Carlos Diaz at the trial in Argentina for the death in 2020 of the soccer star Diego Maradonaby maintaining that there is no criminal evidence against him.
The former soccer player died in home confinement on November 25, 2020 due to cardiorespiratory arrest and pulmonary edema at the age of 60, while recovering from neurosurgery.
Díaz and five other health professionals who participated in that hospitalization are accused of homicide. Some without intention and others with eventual fraud, a figure that implies that they were aware that their actions or omissions could lead to Maradona’s death.
“The result has to do with medical issues that exceed Díaz, who did not have the opportunity, due to his specialty and his role, to prevent death in any way,” said one of his lawyers. Diego Olmedoin front of the court of San Isidronorth of Buenos Aires.
The prosecution and two complaints requested five years in prison for the psychologist for manslaughter. The lawyer for Maradona’s youngest son claimed 12, calling it possible fraud, while the representatives of the youngest daughter and three sisters asked for his acquittal.
The accusers who requested a conviction accuse the psychologist of having promoted home confinement and isolating him from his family.
But Olmedo pointed out that the hospitalization was decided without Díaz’s participation and that the restriction on visits is a common measure in a rehabilitation hospitalization like the one the former soccer player, who was addicted to alcohol, went through.
“Maradona’s daughters know this because I believe that some of them have said in the trial that at the age of 15 they could not see their father because he was hospitalized,” Olmedo recalled, referring to a 2004 hospitalization that deprived the soccer star of attending his daughter’s birthday. Gianinna.
In the final stretch
Two weeks ago, the prosecution requested sentences of up to 12 years for the defendants, while it requested the acquittal of a seventh defendant, a decision that accompanied all the accusations.
The trial began in April and entered its final week this Tuesday. On Thursday there will be the last arguments of the defense and then the verdict will be announced on a date that is still uncertain.
