A team of physicians is being accused of not providing sufficient care to the football star.
A court in Argentina confirmed on Tuesday that eight physicians will stand trial for their alleged roles in the death of football legend Diego Maradona.
Last year, the doctors were charged with “simple homicide with eventual intent,” as prosecutors argued that the patient could still be alive had he been treated properly. If found guilty, they could receive 8 to 25 years in jail.
Maradona died on November 25, 2020 in his home in Tigre, outside Buenos Aires, from a heart attack. He underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain several weeks before his death.
A medical board appointed by investigators concluded in 2021 that the football star was in agony for 12 hours before his demise, and the team treating him was “plagued by irregularities and deficiencies.”
According to the Buenos Aires Herald, neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luciano Luque, one of the main defendants in the case, is accused of not performing “adequate follow-ups with controls and cardiological tests,” as well as having “systematically ignored and belittled the symptoms and signs compatible with heart failure that were reported to him,” among other things.
Other defendants are Maradona’s psychiatrist, psychologist, hospitalization coordinator, attending physician, a nursing coordinator, and two nurses.
Mario Baudry, a lawyer for the Maradona family, said on Wednesday that Maradona’s doctors “abandoned” him and “did nothing” to prevent his death.
Maradona’s daughter, Dalma, wrote on Instagram that “the process is painful and slow, but here we are and we will not stop until justice is done.”
The athlete struggled for decades with an addiction to drugs and alcohol. “When I took cocaine, I became a zombie, I was estranged from my family and society,” Maradona told TyC Sports in 2019.
Maradona captained Argentina’s national team that won the 1986 World Cup. The goal he scored in the quarterfinal against England has been described as ‘the goal of the century’. He was the manager of Argentina’s team between 2008 and 2010.
