Will Argentina one day be able to mourn Diego Maradona? More than five years after the death of the people’s idol, questions surrounding the circumstances of his death following a cardiac arrest are still unanswered. This is where the issue lies in the second trial of the medical team who took care of the Kid in its final days, after the cancellation of the first in 2025 due to the involvement of a judge in a secretly prepared documentary film.
Did Maradona die when his body, worn out by excess and addictions, inevitably gave way? Or did the medical team watching over him fail, perhaps knowingly? Seven health professionals (doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, nurses) are being tried again starting this Tuesday before a federal court in San Isidro, north of Buenos Aires, for three months. The latter are being prosecuted for “homicide with dolus eventualis”, in other words negligence committed while knowing that it could lead to death. They face between 8 and 25 years in prison.
Diego Maradona died at the age of 60, on November 25, 2020, of a cardiorespiratory crisis coupled with pulmonary edema, alone on his bed in a private residence where he was convalescing after neurosurgery for a head hematoma. For the prosecution, the medical team was guilty of “an unprecedented home hospitalization”, marked by a “series of improvisations, management errors and shortcomings”. The defendants deny any responsibility for the death, hiding behind their segmented roles.
A “B side” to the affair?
The first trial was canceled in May 2025, after more than 20 hearings over three months and 44 witnesses heard, because one of the three judges, Julieta Makintach, had, without everyone knowing, collaborated in the production of a documentary mini-series on the case, with herself starring. She has since been dismissed. This second trial will be presided over by a new trio of magistrates.
A test for the family. “None of this should be happening. I had other plans for my life,” lamented Jana, one of Maradona’s daughters, aged 30. “That it was not resolved then (at the first trial), for me it was like mourning a second time,” she told the Infobae website. Convinced more than ever that the accused “killed (his) father”.
Our file on Diego Maradona
The first trial also raised the question of who was the decision-maker in the star’s entourage: his daughters and an ex-partner said they had been kept aside and under-informed by the medical team. For what purposes? Fernando Burlando, virulent lawyer for Dalma and Gianinna, the eldest daughters, spoke at the start of the trial of “assassination” and mentioned a third party’s “pecuniary interest” in Maradona’s death. The “B side” of the affair, according to him.
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