Judge authorizes Maradona to travel to Cuba
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-09-07 09:36

A judge in Argentina Monday allowed former soccer star Diego Maradona to leave the country and travel to Cuba to receive attention for his addiction to drugs.

Judge Norberto Garcia allowed for Diego Maradona to leave for Cuba "whenever he wants" but accompanied by his father, one of his sisters or his personal physician Alfredo Cahe.

Garcia changed the initial decision he took some months ago for Maradona, 44, to remain hospitalized at Del Parque Clinic, in the western suburbs of Buenos Aires, where he underwent a detox treatment.

Last August 12, Maradona, in a visit to President of Argentina Nestor Kirchner, at the Presidential Residence of Casa Rosada, requested him to be allowed to leave the country, something to which the family of the ex-player opposed (his ex-wife Claudia Villafane, his daughters and his parents).

Judge Garcia told the press some days ago that he felt pressure around Maradona, in spite of the independence of the State branches in the country.

Diego Maradona lived for three years in Cuba, where he received attention for his addiction to drugs. According to press versions, Maradona is about to become a father again, but this time with a young Cuban woman with whom he had a relationship while in the Caribbean country.

On March 24, Maradona was urgently hospitalized due to a cocaine overdose that put him on the brink of death, in an event that shocked the world soccer.

His personal doctor, Alfredo Cahe, said the new stage in Maradona's rehabilitation in Cuba will not last less than one yearand a half or two, although it all depends on Diego.

Cahe asked for "God's help" for the complete rehabilitation of Maradona after having failed in the first attempt in Cuba. Maradona was captain of the national soccer team of Argentina that conquered the World Cup in Mexico 1986.

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