Buenos Aires.- Seven of the eight health professionals accused of the death of Diego Maradona in Argentina They will face from Tuesday a trial to determine their responsibilities in the death of the football legend.
The oral trial for “simple homicide with eventual intent”, that is, without intention, can last about four months and foresee sentences between eight and 25 years in prison for the medical team that attended Maradona, who died on November 25, 2020 after a cardiorespiratory crisis.
The process will be carried out in the courts of San Isidro, north of Buenos Aires and near the Balnearia city of Tigre, where the world champion in 1986 fulfilled a house hospitalization after a surgery in the head by a bruise.
The death of the charismatic footballer at 60 years shocked the sports world and was cried by millions of Argentines. His cult reaches the point that in Argentina there is a Maradonian church that maintains “magic” with which “God played football.”
The trial will feature about 120 witnesses, including the children of Maradona, the ex -wife Claudia Villafañe, lawyer Matías Morla, journalists, doctors, experts and friends.
After several postponements, the neurosurgeon Leopold Luciano Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, psychologist Carlos Ángel Díaz, the coordinator doctor Nancy Forlini, the coordinator of nurses Mariano Perroni, the clinical doctor Pedro Pablo Di Spagna and the nurse Ricardo Omar Almirón, will face the court.
Nurse Dahiana Gisela Madrid, the eighth accused, will be judged separately from July in a jury trial at her request. Its process began last October with a preliminary audience.
“Omissions”
According to the autopsy, the idol of the Argentine Boca Juniors and the Italian Naples died from “an acute edema of lung secondary to a reacted chronic heart failure.”
Prosecutors considered in 2022 that the “omissions” of health professionals placed Maradona in a “situation of helplessness”, freeing “it to their fate” in an indigenous hospitalization “, according to the judicial file presented to raise the cause to oral trial.
Health professionals should have sent Maradona to a rehabilitation center after surgery, but kept him in their home without the minimum requirements, prosecutors added.
The file questioned “the behavior that each of the (defendant) incursions would have deployed, not fulfilling the mandate of acting that good medical practice placed in their heads.”
According to Mario Baudry, a lawyer for one of Maradona’s children, Diego Fernando, the argument of the accusation is that the medical team knew that the idol was in danger, but did not act in this regard.
“Knowing that if he continued that way he was going to die, they did nothing to prevent their death,” CNN Argentina told Radio, adding that it is not only a case of negligence.
For his part, Vadim Mischanchuk, lawyer of one of the nurses, denied that there was a criminal responsibility for the accused.
“The extensive investigation of the Prosecutor’s Office has not been able to obtain the necessary certainty for the judges to determine certainly that the conduct of the accused determined the death of the world star,” he told AFP.
“Justice for ‘D10s”
When he died, the world football legend suffered multiple pathologies: kidney, liver problems, heart failure, neurological deterioration and alcohol and psychotropic dependence.
Two of his daughters, Dalma and Gianinna, recently requested in social networks “Justice” for the death of Maradona, which at the time of their death was the coach of Gymnastics and Fencing La Plata, of the First Division of Argentine football.
In addition, together with her mother, the ex -wife of “Ten” Claudia Villafañe, headed in 2021 a demonstration with hundreds of people in which they asked for “social and judicial conviction for the culprits” and in which they carried a flag with the registration “Justice for ‘D10s”.
The Maradona Foundation, launched in October last year by the children of “10” to “honor and preserve its legacy”, is building the “M10 Memorial”, a mausoleum in the center of Buenos Aires in which Maradona’s remains will be transferred and that can be visited by the public.
