The long-awaited criminal trial of eight medical professionals accused of negligence in the death of Argentina football hero Diego Maradona, which was scheduled to begin next week, was postponed Wednesday until October.
Maradona died in November 2020, aged 60, after undergoing brain surgery to remove a blood clot and battling cocaine and alcohol addictions for decades.
He was discovered dead in bed two weeks after undergoing surgery in a leased property in an affluent Buenos Aires neighbourhood where he was transferred after being discharged from the hospital.
He was found to have died of a heart attack.
Last April, an Argentine appeals court confirmed that neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov and six others, including nurses, would stand trial in the matter, rejecting an appeal.
On Wednesday, a court suspended the trial which was to have started next Tuesday to October 1, saying there were “a series of issues… that need to be resolved before the start of the hearings.”
In the same ruling it denied, for the moment, the transfer of Maradona’s remains from a private cemetery
at the request of his daughters and girlfriend, who want to move them to a mausoleum.
Prosecutors have accused the eight medical professionals of providing “reckless” and “deficient” home treatment to Maradona.
A panel of 20 medical experts convened by Argentina’s public prosecutor concluded in 2021 that Maradona “would have had a better chance of survival” with adequate treatment in an appropriate medical facility.
