The highly anticipated trial of eight medical professionals for potential negligence leading to the death of Diego Maradona in 2020, which was due to begin next week, has been postponed until October 1 by an Argentinian court.
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The court also decided not to grant, “for the moment”, the request for transfer of the body of the former world football star to a future mausoleum made by his children, according to a resolution on Wednesday including AFP got a copy.
Maradona, icon in Argentina and legend of world football, died of a cardio-respiratory crisis on November 25, 2020 at the age of 60, alone, on a medical bed in a residence in Tigre, north of Buenos Aires, where he was recovering from neurosurgery for a head hematoma.
In March 2023, the Argentine courts confirmed on appeal the upcoming trial of eight health professionals, who had been sent to court in 2022 for potential negligence leading to Maradona’s death.
Among these eight practitioners, a neurosurgeon and attending physician, a clinical doctor, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a head nurse, nurses. All remain at large.
The accused had contested either their referral to trial or the charge retained, citing involuntary manslaughter. But justice, on appeal, maintained the qualification of “homicide with dolus eventualis”, i.e. an offense characterized when a person commits negligence while knowing that this could lead to death. She is punishable by 8 to 25 years in prison.
On Wednesday, the appeals chamber of the San Isidro Court, in the province of Buenos Aires, decided to “suspend the hearing scheduled for June 4 and reschedule it for October 1 from 9:30 a.m. local” (12:30 p.m. GMT).
According to the court, there are “a series of issues raised by the various parties which still need to be resolved before the hearings begin.”
Among these appeals, a nurse – who from the start said she had only followed the doctors’ instructions – asked to be judged separately, and by a popular jury. Raising in return questions about equal treatment.
Given the technicality of the arguments involved and the time required, the lawyer for Maradona’s daughters, Dalma and Gianina, had in turn requested a postponement of the trial, which the court granted.
Furthermore, in the same resolution on Wednesday, the judge decided not to accede “for the moment, to the transfer of the remains” of Maradona, a request presented a few weeks ago by his daughters, and his ex-partner Veronica Ojeda .
The idea is to transfer the remains of the old N.10, which rests in a private cemetery in Bella Vista, a suburb of Buenos Aires, to the central district of Puerto Madero. To make it a mausoleum where “the Argentine people and citizens of the world can pay homage to the one who was Argentina’s greatest idol.”
The judge justified his temporary decision on “possible measures that could be required” in the context of the trial.