(Buenos Aires) An Argentine court on Tuesday upheld on appeal the pending trial of eight medical professionals, who were sent to court last year for potential negligence leading to the death of Diego Maradona in 2020, it said. we learned from judicial sources.
An Appeals Chamber of the San Isidro court (northwest of Buenos Aires) heard in March the arguments of these professionals, who appealed in 2022, accused of homicide with potential aggravating circumstances.
They disputed either the dismissal, or the head retained, claiming for some a reclassification in involuntary homicide.
The Appeals Chamber upheld the initial qualification of “homicide with dolus eventualis”, i.e. a serious offense when a person commits negligence knowing that it can cause death. She is punishable by 8 to 25 years in prison.
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 hematoma on his head.
In June 2022, a San Isidro judge, following the requisitions of the prosecution, had sent eight practitioners to trial, including a neurosurgeon and attending physician, a clinical doctor, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a chief nurse, nurses. All remain free.
According to prosecutors, the staff in charge of Maradona had been “protagonist of a hospitalization at home … totally deficient and reckless”, marked by a “series of improvisations, mismanagement and failures”.
In its resolution on Tuesday, the Appeals Chamber questioned “the conduct allegedly adopted by each of the defendants, not respecting the mandate to act that good medical practice dictated to them”.
The neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, the psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, the psychologist Carlos Diaz, the medical coordinator Nancy Forlini, the nursing coordinator Mariano Perroni, the nurses Ricardo Almiron and Dahiana Madrid, the clinical doctor Pedro Di Spagna will therefore appear.
No date has been given by the Appeals Chamber for a trial, which should not be held before 2024.