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A teenager claiming to be Diego Maradona’s beloved son has demanded that the great soccer player’s body be drugged for DNA tests to prove his case.
Santiago Lara, 19, instructed his lawyer to make the appeal less than 24 hours after the burial of the star of Naples and Barcelona.
José Núñez submitted a written request to a family court in La Plata, Santiago’s hometown, an hour’s drive south of Buenos Aires, demanding Maradona’s autopsy, DNA results, and the exhumation of his body so that can be transferred to the court morgue.
The development emerged overnight after Núñez went to Argentine television to broadcast his demand. It follows a long battle for Santiago, which began in 2014 when he was only 13 years old, to discover the identity of his real father.
Santiago Lara (pictured right), 19, instructed his lawyer to appeal less than 24 hours after the burial of Naples and Barcelona star Diego Maradona (left, 1978).
Santiago, the supposed sixth son of a growing group of descendants, who Diego’s daughter previously joked could make up a starting eleven, spoke of the claims for the first time four years ago.
The teenager’s mother, waitress Natalia Garat, died at age 23 of lung cancer in 2006 after an alleged seven-year intermittent relationship with Diego, who officially has five children, including two that it took years to recognize as his own.
Natalia’s ex-boyfriend, Marcelo Lara, raised Santiago as his own son.
The teenager instructed his lawyer to initiate legal action to prove that he was Maradona’s son while the retired soccer player was alive after unsuccessful attempts to reach an amicable agreement with the star’s legal team.
Speaking during the night after Núñez confirmed the sensational exhumation demand, Santiago told the Telemundo program Suelta la Sopa: “ My mother died sadly when I was only three years old, but days before her death, when she had to take off the fan to speak, he told a group of lawyers I was Diego’s son.
‘I just want to know who I am. The financial aspect of things is not something that matters to me.
“I know that this lawsuit is going to cause a great commotion in Argentina, but if I don’t do this, who is going to give me the DNA?”
His lawyer, in another interview on an Argentine television program that he attended with a colleague but not with Santiago, added: “We are talking about a young man who has been left without knowing who he really is.
In the photo, an Argentine soccer team pays tribute to the coffin of Argentine soccer legend Maradona in the burning chapel of the Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires.
Photo of the brochure published on November 26 by the press office of the Argentine Presidency that shows Maradona’s coffin in the Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Maradona’s coffin is carried by his family and friends at the Jardín Bella Vista cemetery in the province of Buenos Aires on November 26.
Santiago did not come here today because he is suffering emotionally. Not only does he not know who he is, but he was unable to say goodbye to his father.
The four-page document presented by Mr. Núñez and his business partner, Juan Benítez, demands the exhumation and preservation of Diego Maradona’s body until DNA tests can be performed “so that Santiago Lara can obtain his true identity.”
He says the teenager learned of the former footballer’s death through the media and it caused him “great pain, worry, suffering and anguish.”
The document, presented to the Family Court Number Seven of La Plata, adds in the third of the four pages: “We ask you to present through the chain of custody, the detailed results of the autopsy and lifeless body of Diego Armando Maradona .
‘We request the sealing of the coffin containing the body of Diego Armando Maradona so that it may be transferred to the judicial morgue in La Plata for its conservation.
“We request that the Bella Vista Garden Cemetery receive the order to exhume the remains of Diego Armando Maradona so that they can also be transferred to the same morgue.”
Santiago, the spitting image of Maradona when he was younger with his long head of curly hair, spoke for the first time in September 2016 about his situation.
He said: ‘My father is always going to be Marcelo Lara but what they have told me is that my real father is supposedly Diego Maradona.
I think I look like him, the face, the curls, everything. I look at Marcelo and I know that we are not the same. It’s not easy to wake up in the morning with that feeling. ‘
Santiago told local media in a video interview that he learned that Maradona was his alleged father when he was 13 years old. ‘I found out after I stopped by a newsstand near my house and saw a magazine cover with Maradona’s face and mine pixelated underneath. ‘ he said.
“I was in shock because I didn’t know what I was doing in the magazine. I ran home and asked Marcelo what was going on and he explained everything.
“ He told me that my mother was very well known on the modeling circuit when I was younger and she told me that she had a feeling that I was not her son.
“He told me that a DNA test was requested, but it never came.” At the end of last month, when Diego turned 60, Santiago and his lawyer revealed that they had taken legal action to try to prove the family link.
Maradona also had two daughters from his ex-wife, Dalma, 32, and Gianinna, 30, and a seven-year-old son named Diego Fernando after his ex-girlfriend Verónica Ojeda.
Núñez said he had gone the way of the court due to the ‘radio silence’ of Maradona’s lawyer, Matías Morla, after an initial ‘encouraging’ dialogue when they were given the impression that the soccer legend would accept a test DNA voluntarily.
Diego recognized two sons and three daughters of four different women, including his ex-wife Claudia Villafane and his longtime ex-partner Verónica Ojeda.
Giannina Maradona, one of the footballer’s two daughters by Villafañe, joked last year after the names of three children said to be his in Cuba were made public: ‘Only three more are needed for the 11 team! You can do it !!!’
A 24-year-old brunette named Magali Gil emerged as the last possible member of Maradona’s growing brood in October of last year.
The popular Argentine TV show Intrusos said that Gil had a young daughter who would have made the former Naples and Barcelona star a grandfather had he been confirmed as her father. She has also given birth to another child.
In October of last year, a 23-year-old brunette named Magali Gil (pictured) emerged as the last possible member of Maradona’s brood.
Maradona had recognized two sons and three daughters of four different women, including his ex-wife Claudia Villafane (pictured together) and former partner of many years Verónica Ojeda.
It is understood that he began a judicial process in April last year to try to prove his blood link.
Maradona’s lawyer, Matías Morla, said months before the star’s untimely death that the retired soccer player would assume his responsibilities as Santiago’s father if the blood link was confirmed.
Morla has been previously quoted as saying that ‘everyone knows that Santiago and another person are being talked about in Argentina’, although other media in the South American country have speculated that the eleventh child who would make up Diego’s soccer team is a fourth Cuban.
The Cuban trio whose names have already been made public are Joana, Lu and Javielito, and they were born after Maradona moved to the Caribbean island in February 2000 to combat addiction to drinking and drugs.
Maradona’s lawyer, Matías Morla (in the photo), said months before the footballer’s death that he would assume his responsibilities as Santiago’s father if the blood link was confirmed.
Morla, who admitted in October 2018 that the former footballer had been ‘naughty’ in Cuba and confessed that ‘there were going to be many Maradonas’, has confirmed that the trio met him during Fidel Castro’s funeral.
In recent years, Maradona had recognized his 34-year-old son Diego Junior, born from an extramarital affair with Italian model Cristina Sinagra, and 24-year-old Jana who met his father for the first time almost six years ago after a fight. judicial by his mother Valeria Sabalain.
Maradona also had two daughters from his ex-wife, Dalma, 33, and Giannina, 31, and a seven-year-old son named Diego Fernando after his ex-girlfriend Verónica Ojeda.
Giannina Maradona, one of the former footballer’s two daughters Villafane, joked last year after the names of three children said to be his in Cuba were made public: ‘Only three more are needed for the 11 team! You can do it !!! ‘
Dalma, Giannina and Jana bore the coffin at Diego’s funeral Thursday at the Jardin Bella Vista private cemetery on the northwestern outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Italy-based Diego Junior was unable to attend after being hospitalized for coronavirus.
