Witness arrested for false testimony in Maradona's death trial in Argentina

A former bodyguard of Diego Maradona was arrested Tuesday in Argentina on charges of giving false testimony in the trial seeking to establish the responsibility of seven health professionals in the death of the soccer star, in a hearing in which one of his daughters, Jana Maradona, also testified.

Julio Coria was arrested in a full court in San Isidro, a suburb of Buenos Aires, as part of the trial that began two weeks ago and for which the responsibilities of the medical team in the death of Maradona four years ago are being judged.

Coria was at the house in the private neighborhood of Tigre, near San Isidro, where the soccer player died at the age of 60 and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until the arrival of the doctors.

The Prosecutor's Office interrupted his testimony several times and requested that the former custodian be removed from the courtroom because of "contradictions and omissions" in his statements.

The three judges deemed the prosecutor's references to the crime of perjury by the witness to be "accurate." The witness was then handcuffed and removed from the courtroom.

The former bodyguard could serve up to 5 years in prison for "false testimony"

Coria will be detained for one day and a case will be opened against him for false testimony. If found guilty, he faces up to 5 years in prison, the lawyer for one of the parties told AFP. Previously, the judge informed the witness that he risked 10 years.

The former bodyguard said he had not spoken to Leopoldo Luque, Maradona's personal doctor charged in the case, but the complaint exposed multiple chat conversations between the two. Coria said he "did not remember them."

Fernando Burlando, the lawyer of Dalma and Gianinna Maradona, also daughters of the star, exposed a conversation after the death in which Luque and Coria coordinated a meeting to eat "an asado." The prosecution requested the arrest by arguing that the witness was "being mendacious in an eloquent way."

"A witness who omits, who misrepresents the truth, who hides, who in the face of the overwhelming evidence of his own chat, continues to deny the truth, has no other consequence than what we could actually observe, which is the arrest and investigation for failure to testify," Burlando told the news agency at the end of the hearing.

Coria had also stated that psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, another of the accused, tried to revive Maradona, but in her previous statements she had not given this information.

Cosachov's lawyer, Vadim Muschanchuk, commented that the arrest of the witness corresponds to "technical issues" of a trial: "It will surely be clarified in the other case (for false testimony), that the witness did not lie," he told AFP.

Maradona died on November 25, 2020.

The idol of Argentina's Boca Juniors and Italy's Napoli, who had periods of excess during his troubled life, died of pulmonary edema on Nov. 25, 2020 while under the care of the doctors charged with his care following neurosurgery.

The trial, which began on March 11, will last at least until July and some 120 witnesses are expected to testify. The defendants defend their innocence and risk between 8 and 25 years in prison.