New trial over Maradona's death begins, a year after scandal | OneFootball

The new trial over the death of legendary soccer player Diego Maradona begins this Tuesday (14) in Argentina after the annulment of a first one a year ago, in which it was discovered that one of the judges was participating in a clandestine documentary about the case.

The scandal, which brought down the first trial in May 2025, voided 20 court hearings and 44 testimonies collected over two and a half months.

The second trial, in which about 120 witnesses will be heard, will seek to determine the responsibility of Maradona’s medical team, but with a new approach from the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

“The failed trial and the fact that the defense teams became aware of our methods forced us to change strategies, but always with the firm conviction that we will prevent impunity for those responsible,” prosecutor Patricio Ferrari told AFP.

The Argentine soccer icon died at the age of 60 on November 25, 2020, due to cardiorespiratory failure and pulmonary edema at a private residence in Tigre, north of Buenos Aires, where he was recovering from neurosurgery.

Seven health professionals — doctors, psychologists, nurses — who were caring for him at the time are accused of homicide with possible intent, a legal figure that implies they were aware that their actions could cause the former player’s death.

The defense argues that he died of natural causes. “If there is one thing that has been ruled out, it is a deliberate criminal plan to kill Maradona. Anyone who continues to claim that is being cruel to the family and to the defendants,” Vadim Mischanchuk, lawyer for psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, told Con Vos radio on Sunday.

The proceedings in San Isidro, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, will include 30 hearings twice a week and are expected to last at least until July.

News of the death of the world champion with Argentina in 1986 brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in collective mourning amid the covid-19 pandemic.

“Divine Justice”

During the high-profile trial in 2025, images were released of Julieta Makintach, one of the three judges on the court, as the protagonist of a clandestine documentary about the same case she was part of.

The magistrate was removed, the trial annulled, and the scandal dominated headlines in Argentina and abroad.

Titled “Divine Justice,” the documentary showed Makintach walking through the courthouse hallways with electronic music playing in the background and then being interviewed in her chambers.

The judge was removed from office in November in a political trial.

“Trash, you threw me out because everything was scripted,” shouted one of the defense lawyers, Rodolfo Baqué, who was expelled from the courtroom at the first hearing by Makintach’s order on the grounds that he was not authorized.

Throughout the first trial, both the conditions of Maradona’s care and the appropriateness of treating the former soccer player at his residence in Tigre were questioned, an arrangement agreed upon by the family and the medical team after the neurosurgery.

The medical team carried out an “inhumane plan with an effective outcome,” said Fernando Burlando, lawyer for Dalma and Gianinna Maradona. The soccer star was “murdered” and “in any run-down hospital they would have saved his life,” according to Maradona’s daughter.

“We all believed it had been a natural death. Until three days later, the Public Prosecutor’s Office called us and told us that they may have killed him. And that’s when the investigation began,” Jana, the fourth of Maradona’s five children, recalled to the Argentine press in March.

The defense teams have different strategies for each defendant. The main ones are, in addition to Cosachov, trusted physician Leopoldo Luque and psychologist Carlos Díaz.

The defendants face sentences of 8 to 25 years in prison. An eighth defendant will be tried in a separate proceeding.

*With content from AFP

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.