Updated 4:28 PM ET
GUATEMALA CITY Anti-virus software founder John McAfee was released from a detention center Wednesday and was escorted by immigration officials and police trucks to the Guatemala City airport, where he said he was put on a commercial flight bound for Miami.
The escort to the airport, accompanied by a throng of journalists and two police trucks with sirens blaring, marked the last chapter for McAfee's strange, monthlong odyssey to avoid police questioning about a killing in neighboring Belize.
- John McAfee says he wants to return to U.S.
- Lawyer: John McAfee to be freed in Guatemala
"McAfee entered the country illegally," immigration service spokesman Fernando Lucero said. "Guatemala is expelling him. Since his country of origin is the United States, Guatemala is expelling him to the United States."
In one of the most highly publicized flights from police questioning since O.J. Simpson led police on televised low-speed car chase, McAfee constantly blogged and spoke with reporters about his life on the lam.
Bystanders in Guatemala City stopped to stare at the passing police convoy, and people at the airport massed around the immigration truck carrying McAfee, straining to take pictures of him with their cell phones.
Dressed in a black suit and white shirt, McAfee said, "I'm free. I'm going to America."
He suggested his weeklong detention in Guatemala for entering the country clandestinely had taken its toll on him.
"All I can tell you is I'm 10 years older, and I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to Miami," he said.
McAfee was detained last week for immigration violations after he sneaked into Guatemala from neighboring Belize, where authorities sought to question him about the murder of a neighbor.
His 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend who has accompanied him since he went on the run was not with him on the ride to the airport. She was last seen early Wednesday leaving the detention facility crying, after bringing McAfee breakfast.
Telesforo Guerra, a lawyer for McAfee, said Tuesday that a judge has ordered the software company founder released from a Guatemalan detention center. Guerra said the judge notified him verbally of the ruling.
Guerra said Secaida ruled that McAfee's detention was illegal, ordered him released, and gave him 10 days to put his immigration situation in order. It was not immediately clear if McAfee could get some kind of temporary or transit visa to allow him to leave Guatemala.
McAfee was detained last week for immigration violations after he sneaked into Guatemala from neighboring Belize. He had been on the lam for weeks before that, saying he donned disguises to avoid Belizean police who want to question him in the fatal shooting in November of another U.S. expatriate, Gregory Viant Faull.
The victim lived a couple of houses down from McAfee's compound on Ambergris Caye, an island off Belize's Caribbean coast. McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull.
McAfee has said corrupt Belizean authorities are persecuting him, something officials in Belize deny. McAfee says he fears for his safety in Belize because he has sensitive information about official corruption and refused to donate to local politicians.
In a live-stream Internet broadcast Sunday from the Guatemalan detention center where he was put under the government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old McAfee said he wants to return to the United States and "settle down to whatever normal life" he can.
"I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years," he said.
Anti-virus guru John McAfee arrested
McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications. He has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.
He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $4 million of his $100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as "not very accurate at all."
Faull's family has said through a representative that McAfee's skillful courting of the media, including blog posts, email messages clandestine interviews, has obscured the point that McAfee should submit to police questioning.
Source: http://www.news.theusalinks.com/2012/12/12/guatemala-releases-mcafee-headed-to-leave-for-u-s/
0 comments:
Post a Comment