Diego Maradona suffered an agonising 12-hour de.ath in a dark room, struggling to breathe after his heart swelled to double that of a regular size
They’re the morbid details which have reportedly emerged in court as gruesome images of his organs were shown for the first time, with his daughter Jana leaving the room.
Seven medical professionals are on trial for culpable homicide – roughly equivalent to involuntary manslaughter – after the 1986 World Cup winner died following a heart attack aged 60 in 2020. They deny the charges.
Four-and-a-half litres of fluid had accumulated in his organs due to an acute pulmonary edema brought on by his heart failure.
Forensic expert Carlos Mauricio Casinelli showed pictures of brain clots, a ‘sign of agony’, and claimed his heart weighed 503 grams – more than a football.
Argentinian newspaper Clarin carries the horrifying details which emerged in the trial, with Casinelli claiming that his torture would have been easy to spot for days.
‘The heart was completely covered in fat and blood clots, which indicate agony,’ he said. ‘This is a patient who had been collecting water over the days; that’s not acute.
‘This was something that was foreseeable. Any doctor examining a patient would find this.
‘The water he had in his abdomen, in both pleurae, and in his heart isn’t normal; it doesn’t form in a day or an hour. It’s been forming over several days; there’s no exact time. It could have been from the time he was expelled (from hospital) until he died.
‘This is likely to take at least 10 days, given the addition of cirrhosis and myocarditis.’
Maradona had been recovering at home from a surgery on a brain blood clot, which he had had earlier that November. Two weeks later, Argentina and the football world were plunged into mourning.
Casinelli added: ‘It was a dark, partitioned room, with a bed in the middle of the room and a portable toilet.
‘It didn’t seem like a suitable place for what we later learned was home hospitalisation.’
Forensic doctor Federico Corasaniti backed up the claim that Maradona suffered a gradual de.ath.
He believes that Maradona’s condition was that bad that the pressure on his lungs would have been audible to other people.
‘From my experience with the generalized edema, the difficulty he must have had breathing and exchanging gases, and the sounds in his lungs that are audible just by bringing his face close,’ he said.
Renowned for his breathtaking playing ability, Maradona’s wild life off the pitch was equally notorious; running around with the mafia in Naples, serial womanising and a lethal dependency on alcohol and cocaine.
Maradona’s cause of death was officially listed as ‘acute pulmonary edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure’.
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