The death of Diego Armando Maradona returns to the center of the trial in Argentina. The prosecution requests up to 12 years in prison for the doctors and healthcare workers who treated him, held responsible for serious omissions and for failing to take the necessary measures to save his life.
Diego Armando Maradona he was treated by a group of amateurs, abandoned and killed by the doctors who had taken care of him. The charge is voluntary manslaughter and in the hearing which took place at the Court of San Isidro the prosecutor asked for a sentence of twelve years for Leopoldo Luqueten for his psychiatrist, eight for the coordinator of the facility that treated him and five for a psychologist, as well as four years each for a nursing coordinator and his subordinate. The prosecution alleges that they all made, or failed to make, crucial decisions that could have saved the life of one of Argentina’s and world sports’ most popular figures. The autopsy on the body of Diez found that he had developed liver cirrhosis and lung disease and that, at the time of death, he had a disproportionately enlarged abdominal cavity and serious alterations to the kidneys and heart. The exact cause of death, however, was a pulmonary edema caused by heart failure, in his home in Dique Lujan, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Diego passed away on November 25, 2020, he had just turned sixty.
“Luque did nothing to save him”
The clinical doctor acquitted Pedro of Spain who according to prosecutor Patricio Ferrari “is the only one who did what he had to do and who had no power to decide on the victim’s conditions of hospitalization”. His words were much harsher towards the neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque. “He did not draw up an updated medical record. He did not organize hospitalization in a specialized medical facility, given the complexity of the patient. He did everything he could to make things go wrongAnd again: “He ignored the signs of heart failure. Everyone told him he was swollen and was retaining fluids. Luque’s attitude was always the same: do nothing”. The main accused defended himself by claiming that he was faced with a “sudden, acute and unpredictable cardiac event”.
“Forlini is also absent”
Heavy accusations also for Nancy Forlinithe coordinator of Swiss Medical, the clinic that has followed Maradona in the last few days, doesn’t even come out well from the indictments: “He led the other chaotic organization that kept the patient in a condition of continuous precariousness in the last few days“After the arguments of the prosecutors and the other civil parties, the defense of each accused will have up to three hours to support the conduct of their clients in the two weeks in which assistance was provided to Maradona, who in the last phase of his life suffered from his addiction to drugs and alcohol.
