Diego Maradona has slammed FIFA for banning Luis Suarez from playing football for four months.
The 1986 World Cup winner displayed his support for the 27 year-old striker whose World Cup came to an abrupt end yesterday after he was adjudged to have bitten an opponent.
Suarez, who has been sanctioned twice before for sinking his teeth into players, was hit with an unprecedented suspension which will precent him from any football related activity for four months - plus a nine game international ban,
But Maradona believes the Uruguyan has been unfairly treated by football's governing body.
Appearing on the De Zurda TV show, the 53 year old wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Luisito Estamos Con Vos' meaning 'Little Luis we are with you'.
Maradona said: "Why? Who is killed? This is football, this is friction - why not send him to Guantanamo?"
The Argentine is well versed with FIFA's disciplinary process having been sent home in disgrace from the 1994 World Cup after testing positive for a cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs.
It came as Suarez's grandmother said he had been unfairly victimised in his "barbaric" expulsion.
"Everyone knows what they've done to Luis. They wanted him out of the World Cup. Perfect, they did it. They chucked him out of there like a dog," a sobbing Lila Piriz Da Rosa said from Suarez's birthtown Salto in north-west Uruguay.
Piriz, who has 22 grand-children, said football authorities had been watching Suarez from the outset.
Luis Suarez - past controversies
"This was on purpose," she said of the sanctions given to the brilliant but volatile Suarez, who has been punished three times now for biting and once for racism.
About 500 fans gathered outside Montevideo's Carrasco international airport to express solidarity with Suarez and chant his name. Some had been waiting for hours, waving Uruguay flags, posters of Suarez and replicas of the World Cup trophy.
Airport authorities said, however, that he was to be whisked out privately and to his home in the coastal resort of Solymar, about 40 kilometres outside Montevideo.
