Seven health professionals who tended to Diego Maradona, including the football legend's personal physician, will be questioned by Argentine prosecutors from Monday. They have already have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. (More Football News)
All seven are prohibited from leaving the country, and risk between eight and 25 years in prison if convicted. According to reports, they will appear one by one before prosecutors, accompanied by defense lawyers, to reply to the allegations against them.
The hearings were postponed from last month due to a spike in Coronavirus cases in Argentina. It will end on June 28.
Maradona, who led Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup, died of a heart attack on November 25 last year at a rented residence outside Buenos Aires following brain surgery two weeks earlier. He was 60.
A medical board's report given to prosecutors concluded that Maradona was in agony for more than 12 hours, did not receive adequate treatment and could still be alive if he had been properly hospitalised.
Prosecutors last month charged neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque and psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, the two leaders of Maradona's medical team, and five other health professionals with involuntary manslaughter.
Another doctor, a psychologist, two nurses and a nurse coordinator were the others.
The medical panel's report said “the patient's signs of risk of life were ignored,” adding that Maradona “showed unequivocal signs of a prolonged agony period” of at least 12 hours.
The care that Maradona received at the rented house, the report said, “did not fulfill the minimum requirements” for a patient with his medical history, and that he would have survived with “adequate hospitalization.”
Maradona had suffered a series of medical problems, some due to excesses of drugs and alcohol.
He was reportedly near death in 2000 and 2004.
Julio Rivas, a lawyer for Luque, said earlier this month that medical forensics of the report were flawed and “biased... with no scientific foundation.”
