Doctor’s office is investigated over Maradona death probe

Argentine police have searched the home and office of one of Diego Maradona’s doctors, taking away medical records as part of investigations into the death of the 60-year-old football star that caused a wave of grief across the country.

Neurologist Leopoldo Luque told reporters after the searches that he had given investigators all of the records of his treatment of Maradona, as well as computers, hard drives and cellphones.

Weeping at times, he insisted he defended his treatment of the troubled football legend, who died on Wednesday of a heart attack following a November 3 brain operation.

“I know what I did. I know how I did it … I am absolutely sure that what I did the best for Diego, the best I could,” he said on Sunday.

Luque said he was not Maradona’s chief physician, but part of a medical team.

The search order was requested by prosecutors in the affluent Buenos Aires suburb San Isidro and signed by a local judge, according to a statement issued by the prosecutor’s office.

“Yesterday [Saturday] the investigation and substantiation of evidence continued with the taking of statements from people including direct relatives of the deceased,” it said.

“By virtue of the evidence that was collected, it was considered necessary to request searches at the home and office of doctor Leopoldo Luque,” the prosecutor’s office said in the statement.

The prosecutor’s office is overseeing a probe into the medical attention that Maradona received before his death, which caused an enormous outpouring of emotion across Argentina and among football fans across the world.

It provided no information on what prompted the investigation.

Maradona’s lawyer, Matias Moria, on Thursday said he would ask for a full investigation of the circumstances of the football legend’s death, criticising what he said was a slow response by the emergency services.

“The ambulance took more than half an hour to arrive, which was a criminal idiocy,” Matias said on Thursday in a Twitter post.

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