FOOTBALL legend Diego Maradona spent his last days in a “house of horror”, a prosecutor claimed during a trial over the sporting icon’s death in Argentina.
The World Cup winner’s home care was “reckless and deficient”, according to chief prosecutor Patricio Ferrari as he described the seven defendants on trial.
A trial over the icon's death involved the chief prosecutor showing the court a very graphic image of the footballer
The defendants - who were called a bunch of “people who improvised” - are charged with homicide and face up to 25 years in jail if convicted.
Mr Ferrari told a Buenos Aires court that the carers were “absolutely indifferent” to the consequences of poor care provided to Maradona, delivering a hard hitting speech at the start of the trial.
The prosecutor said: “You will see during this trial what reckless home care is, reckless, deficient, without precedent, without any type of control during the period that ended with Diego’s death.
“They co-operated in putting into place a series of factors or circumstances that increased the permitted risk to generate the death of Diego Armando Maradona which is something we say they were absolutely different to."
The prosecutor shocked the room by holding up a grim picture of the player’s last day, which showed the Argentinian icon lying on his back with his bloated stomach exposed under a lifted-up black T-shirt.
“This is the way he died,” Ferrari told the court.
Over 100 witnesses are set to give evidence in this trial, which will focus on the care he received at a house in Tigre when he died from heart failure in November 2020.
Just before he died in 2020, he had returned to the house from a blood clot operation at a hospital.
Although the icon struggled with obesity, alcoholism and drug abuse, 20 medical experts stated in 2021 that his death could have been avoided with better treatment.
Maradona’s doctor Leopoldo Luque, and his physiatrist Aguestina Cosachov, who were responsible for the footballer’s last days, are due to get in the dock.
Former lover Veronica Ojeda, who is also the mother of his 12-year-old son, Dieguito, and his two grown-up daughters Dalma and Gianinna with his ex-wife Claudia Villafane, all attended the court session.
When the haunting last image of Maradona was shown to the court, Dalma broke down in tears.
Mr Ferrari said: “The right to truth is a human right and today Diego Armando Maradona, his children, his relatives, those closest to him and the Argentinian people deserve justice.
He added that the public prosecution’s “solid” case was supported by messages from phones seized during property raids as well as witness evidence including the testimony of a number of medical experts.
He continued: “We will show that between November 11 and 25 2020, Diego Armando Maradona was introduced into house 45 in the San Barrio neighbourhood in San Benavides in Tigre when, clearly the victim, he was not in full use of his mental faculties and even less could decide on his own about his health.
“He entered that place for a clinical rehabilitation and home medical care that we can say without any doubt was calamitous.
He said the defendants “improvised” and that they “neglected all the duties they had”.
"In that House of Horror where Diego Maradona died no-one did what they had to do,” Mr Ferrari added.
Before the hearing, his former partner Veronica Ojeda launched into an furious tirade at Agustina Cosachov.
She was caught on camera from a distance shouting “Daughter of a b**ch”, before police stepped in to separate them.
The other defendants aside from Luque and Cosachov are nurses Ricardo Almiron; Nancy Forlini and Mariano Perroni: psychologist Carlos Diaz and doctor Pedro Di Spagno.
An eighth person, nurse Gisella Dahiana Madrid, will be tried separately later this year.
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