Five suspects who are being investigated over Liam Payne’s death are set to learn if they will be prosecuted early in the New Year.
The One Direction star fell to his death aged 31 on October 31. The tragedy happened at the Casa Sur Palermo hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Judge Laura Bruniard now has ten days to decide whether the suspects should face charges as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, or if the case against them should be closed. The two hotel employees who last week became the latest of the five men now under official investigation are set to be questioned over Zoom next week. It's thought this will happen between December 17 and 19 defence lawyers will be present.
The court quiz dates of the original three suspects, who include Liam’s alleged drug dealer, have not yet been made public. It's expected that by the time the judge makes her decision, she will have received expert reports drafted following analysis of mobile phones and computers that belong to the suspects and witnesses.
The judge is also said to be hoping to have received missing CCTV footage that could show the moment the tragic singer hit his head on the concrete base of a giant sunshade on a restaurant terrace underneath his room. Local reports claim there is a hard drive thought to contain the footage. It's claimed this was handed in by restaurant bosses - but the video has yet to be located and incorporated into the case files.
Image:
Getty Images)At the start of the week Judge Bruniard demanded police cybercrime specialists carry out “22 examinations of different phones and computers” confiscated from witnesses and suspects during prosecutor-requested raids. The orders followed the reactivation of the stalled investigation after a successful appeal by lead prosecutor Andres Madrea against the judge’s decision last month to rule herself out of the criminal probe on a technicality.
She had claimed the case had to be investigated by a conventional Buenos Aires court under Argentinian law because one of the allegations was Liam, 31, had been abandoned before his October 16 death at the Casasur Palermo Hotel. Mr Madrea’s submission that her decision was “premature” was accepted at the start of last week by a higher court.
Earlier, a toxicology report shed light on the singer's final moments, with experts sharing a devastating find about his horror fall. On November 7,a report from the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor's Officedetermined that traces of "alcohol, cocaine and prescription antidepressants" had been found in Liam's system. Officials also ruled out suicide, explaining that "in the state he was in, he did not know what he was doing and could not understand it".
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