Diego Maradona's 8 medical personnel to face homicide trial
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Eight medical personnel will stand trial for alleged criminal neglect causing Argentine football legend Diego Maradona to die in bed while receiving post-surgery care, according to a court ruling made public Wednesday.
A judge on Wednesday ordered a culpable homicide trial for the eight, who include Maradona's family doctor and nurses, based on evidence that they had failed to take "action that could have prevented the death" in November 2020.
No date has been set for the trial of the eight over Maradona's death in 2020, which prosecutors say was due to "omissions" by his caregivers who abandoned him "to his fate" during home hospitalization.
He was found dead in bed two weeks after going under the knife, in a rented house in an exclusive Buenos Aires neighborhood where he was brought after being discharged from the hospital.
He was found to have died of a heart attack.
A panel of 20 medical experts convened by Argentina's public prosecutor concluded last year that Maradona's treatment was rife with "deficiencies and irregularities."
It said the footballer "would have had a better chance of survival" with adequate treatment in an appropriate medical facility.
The experts found his caregivers had abandoned the idolized player to his fate for a "prolonged, agonizing period" leading up to his death.
Neurosurgeon and family doctor Leopoldo Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, psychologist Carlos Diaz, medical coordinator Nancy Forlini and four others including nurses were placed under investigation.
Prosecutors have asked that they be tried for negligent homicide.
They claim mismanagement by the team had placed the football legend in a "situation of helplessness."
The accused risk sentences ranging from eight to 25 years in prison.
According to the prosecutors, the defendants "were the protagonists of an unprecedented, totally deficient and reckless hospitalization at home", allegedly responsible for a "series of improvisations, management failures, and shortcomings."
Maradona is widely considered one of the greatest footballers in history.