Diego Maradona football legend “Sometimes he resisted” to be treated by doctors, said one of his sisters on Thursday in the Trial to seven health professionals for his death in Argentina in November 2020.
Claudia and Ana, two of Maradona’s sisters, who are complainants in the case, declared this Thursday in the fourth week of the trial that takes place in San Isidro, a suburb north of Buenos Aires near the town of Tigre, where the former soccer player died.
Claudia, 53 and the youngest of Maradona’s five sisters, said Diego “sometimes resisted” to be treated by doctors and that “he was strong.”
She and Ana, 74, agreed that her brother “did what he wanted.”
Maradona died from a pulmonary edema generated by heart failure on November 25, 2020 while studying subsequent hospitalization of a neurosurgery.
The sisters said they participated in the decision to make domiciliary and Claudia said that the specialists had told them that “there were going to be clinical doctors” and equipment to attend it.
Lack of resources to take care of Maradona
Other witnesses in the trial in their testimonies pointed out that there were no ambulances or medical equipment as a defibrillator in the house where the idol died.
The sisters said that Leopoldo Luque, the neurosurgeon and one of the accused in the case, was Maradona’s trust doctor.
Ana said she saw her brother for the last time when she was admitted to the Olivos Clinic, weeks before her death, and that when she asked her how she was, he replied: “My soul hurts.”
On Thursday afternoon it was expected to declare another of his sisters, Rita, and Verónica Ojeda, mother of Diego Maradona’s minor son.
Seven health professionals (doctors, nurses, the psychiatrist and a psychologist) are accused of homicide with eventual intent, a figure that implies that they were aware that their actions could cause death. An eighth accused -ephermera- will be judged in a separate process.
This trial, which began on March 11, will last at least until July with the declaration of dozens of witnesses. The defendants will risk between 8 and 25 years in prison.
The lawyer of the Maradona sisters, Pablo Jurado, objected some of the questions of other complainants to the witnesses, who pointed to the contractual relations between the former soccer player and his sisters.
For jury, the answers can affect the interests of their defended in another case, in which Maradona’s children demand their aunts for the rights of the “Maradona brand.”
The court did not make room for protests and the sisters had to respond to it.
The brands “are something that left us to the family,” Claudia said and added that before his death Diego Maradona only “gave gifts.”
