Funeral parlour workers pose with Diego Maradona’s body in coffin

Maradona's lawyer will take legal action against the men

Three funeral parlour workers in Argentina have been widely criticised for posing for photographs with Diego Maradona's body in its open coffin. Two separate images, which, for obvious reasons, we have not included in this article, were widely circulated across social media networks in South America shortly after Maradona's death on Wednesday. They were taken as the iconic footballer's coffin was prepared to be transported to the presidential palace in Buenos Aires for a period of lying in state. One of the pictures shows one of the men, identified as Diego Molina, resting a hand on Maradona’s head while giving a thumbs-up with his other hand. The other image features two men, the younger of which also posing with a thumbs-up. The pictures were taken at the Sepelios Pinier funeral parlour in the Argentine capital. Its manager, Diego Picon, has explained that the three men were ‘outsourced employees’. "My father is 75 years old and he is crying, I am crying, my brother too, we are destroyed,’ Picon told the TN news outlet. "He [Molina] is not an employee here, he is a third party who only helped us load the coffin because it weighs a lot. The family chose a cedar wood box that is very difficult to transport and that is why we summoned him, just to carry the box. "The three outsourced employees that we called and appear in the images, we took away their mobile phones in the morgue. "We gave them back when all the work had been finished and at that moment, which was when the police called me to organise the transfer, that's when they did it." Maradona's legal representative, Matias Morla, has already identified Molina on his Twitter account, vowing to take action. 'To protect the memory of my friend I won’t rest until he pays for such an atrocity,' he tweeted.