Liam Payne‘s body is to be flown home to the UK by Monday “at the latest”.
The One Direction singer’s funeral is expected to take place next week. The star tragically died after falling from the balcony of his hotel room last month.
Undertakers are said to have moved his body from a Buenos Aires morgue to the 1820s-founded British Cemetery in the northern part of the Argentinian capital after prosecutors gave his heartbroken dad Geoff permission to take him home. Local media reports that the repatriation will take place tomorrow or Monday – “48 hours maximum” – once the embalming process is finished.
Respected Argentinian daily La Nacion said Geoff had been told personally in a new meeting with prosecution chief Andres Madrea he could return to the UK with Liam’s body two weeks after flying to the south American country following the 31-year-old’s three-story hotel fall.
It said: “All the documents are ready for the former One Direction singer to return to his homeland so a funeral can take place there next week. When Geoff Payne reached Argentina on October 18 he was told the repatriation process could take between four and five days, but because of the circumstances surrounding his son’s death things took longer than expected.”
Prosecutors have yet to confirm that any results are back from the toxicology and tissue tests. The Mirror reports that Liam’s dad was told they would have to be completed before the funeral could occur.
Police examined computers and paperwork at the hotel, in what is thought to have been part of a hunt for his drug dealer amid speculation someone from his hotel was supplying him with narcotics. Infobae reported three days earlier that forensic teams had found traces of cocaine in Liam’s body.
However, tests on a white powder pictured in the inside of his hotel suite after his death had so far proved “inconclusive.” Other unconfirmed reports originating in the US claimed a cocktail of drugs, including designer narcotic pink cocaine containing MDMA, ketamine, and methamphetamine had been found in his system during a partial autopsy along with crack cocaine and benzodiazepine.
Geoff reached Argentina two days after his son’s death and was pictured reading messages at a makeshift shrine outside Liam’s hotel. He also visited the third-floor suite the former One Direction singer was staying in after being permitted to take away his son’s clothes and other belongings. Thousands of grieving Liam Payne fans have signed a petition urging that a memorial be erected in honour of the singer, who had been with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy in Argentina before she returned to the States a few days before he died.
His fans are requesting a permanent “structure or mural” is put in place in his home city of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. The British Aires British Cemetery was moved to its current location in 1892. The cemetery contains the war graves of one Royal Navy seaman from World War I and eleven World War II British service personnel.
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