Detained McAfee hospitalised in Guatemala
2012-12-07 08:04
US internet security pioneer John McAfee is transferred in an ambulance to the national Police Hospital in Guatemala City. (Johan Ordonez, AFP)
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Guatemala City - Software guru John McAfee, who is fighting
deportation to Belize, was rushed to the hospital in Guatemala on Thursday after
his lawyer said he suffered two mild heart attacks earlier in the day.
Reporters saw McAfee carried out on a stretcher from an
immigration service cottage where he was detained after crossing illegally into
Guatemala from neighbouring Belize, where police want to question him in
connection with his neighbour's murder.
The 67-year-old US software pioneer's hospitalisation came
after Guatemala denied a request for asylum.
McAfee was posting on his blog www.whoismcafee.com
in the morning, the time his lawyer said he suffered the heart attacks.
"I don't think a heart attack prevents one from using
one's blog," said the lawyer, Telesforo Guerra.
On Thursday afternoon he was carried out, wrapped in a
blanket with his eyes shut, and taken to a police hospital.
Person of interest
Guerra's assistant, Karla Paz, said she found McAfee lying
on the ground, unable to move his body or speak.
McAfee was detained by Guatemalan police on Wednesday for
illegally sneaking across the border with his 20-year-old girlfriend to escape
authorities in Belize. He has said he fears authorities in Belize will kill him
if he returns.
Guatemala's foreign minister, Harold Caballeros, said
McAfee's request for asylum was rejected.
Constitutional lawyer Gabriel Orellana, a former foreign
minister, said the government should have given more weight to the asylum
request than his illegal entry into Guatemala.
"We should take into account the fact that McAfee has
not been accused of any crime in Belize," he said.
Police in Belize want to quiz McAfee as "a person of
interest" in the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull, with whom he
had quarrelled. But they say he is not a prime suspect in the probe. McAfee
says he has been persecuted by Belize's ruling party because he refused to pay
it around $2m.
Suicide absurdly redundant
Belize's prime minister denies this and has described
McAfee, who made millions from the internet anti-virus software that bears his
name, as "bonkers". McAfee later lost much of his fortune and turned
to a life of semi-reclusion by the beach.
After his arrest, McAfee spent the night in a cottage
belonging to the immigration department. He passed much of the night reading
his blog and posting his thoughts on a laptop he said was lent to him by the
warden.
One person asked him if he felt like committing suicide.
"I enjoy living, and suicide is absurdly
redundant," he wrote. "The world, from the very beginning, hurls
viruses, accidents, hungry animals, defective DNA - and uncountable more - in
an attempt to kill us. It always succeeds. Suicide is simply aiding and
abetting."
McAfee's earlier posts spoke of his relief at arriving in
Guatemala, thinking he had found a way out of his troubles.
Government spokesperson Francisco Cuevas said on Wednesday
the eccentric tech entrepreneur, who loves guns and young women and has tribal
tattoos covering his shoulders, would be expelled to Belize within hours.
However, an immigration department official later said immediate deportation had
been ruled out.
Eccentric, unstable
The US State Department said it was aware of McAfee's arrest
and its embassy was providing "appropriate consular services", but
said it could not comment further.
On the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has
lived in Belize for about four years, residents and neighbours say he is
eccentric and at times unstable. He was seen to travel with armed bodyguards,
sporting a pistol tucked into his belt.
The predicament of the former Lockheed systems consultant is
a far cry from his heyday in the late 1980s, when he started McAfee Associates.
McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was sold to Intel.
McAfee was previously charged in Belize with possession of
illegal firearms, and police had raided his property on suspicions that he was
running a lab to produce illegal synthetic narcotics. He says he has not taken
drugs since 1983.
"[Before then] I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the
day. I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the
planet," he said before his arrest. "Then I finally went to
Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it."
