Program entrepreneur John McAfee’s widow blames U.S. for death

BARCELONA, June 25 (Reuters) – The widow of U.S. software program mogul John McAfee blamed U.S. authorities on Friday for his death in a Spanish prison exactly where he was awaiting extradition to the United States and stated he was not suicidal.

Janice McAfee said she preferred a complete investigation into the instances of the loss of life of the 75-year-aged, which transpired in his prison cell on Wednesday in what the authorities reported was an evident suicide by hanging.

Dressed in black and wearing darkish sunglasses, she told reporters exterior the Barcelona-location Brians 2 jail, exactly where her spouse experienced been held due to the fact Oct, that she experienced last spoken to him a couple several hours before he was located dead.

“His previous words and phrases to me have been ‘I really like you and I will phone you in the evening’, people terms are not terms of a person who is suicidal,” she mentioned, holding back tears.

“I blame the U.S. authorities for this tragedy. Since of these politically enthusiastic costs versus him, my spouse is now useless,” she explained, including that he planned to appeal from Spain’s significant court ruling, released a few several hours just before his demise, that authorised his extradition on tax evasion charges.

A U.S. embassy spokesperson mentioned: “We are closely monitoring nearby authorities’ investigation into the induce of dying, and stand prepared to deliver all proper guidance to the household. Out of respect to the household for the duration of this complicated time, we have no additional remark.”

British-born McAfee, who released the world’s first business anti-virus in 1987, was detained final October at the Barcelona airport. He experienced lived for several years on the operate from U.S. authorities, some of that time aboard a megayacht.

He was indicted in Tennessee on tax evasion costs and was billed in a cryptocurrency fraud situation in New York.

Contacting her husband a fighter who “had hope things would work out”, Janice McAfee included: “I will not think he did this, I will get solutions.”

McAfee’s lawyer, Javier Villalba, said the family was awaiting the results of an formal autopsy, but he would request a next, impartial autopsy as instructed by the McAfee family members, who he reported could get authorized action once the investigation into the death was concluded.

McAfee was sharing his mobile with one more inmate but was on your own when he died, a jail source said.

Catalonia’s Justice Division has opened an interior investigation into the dying.

The suicide rate in Spanish jails was put in the “incredibly higher” group in a 2020 Council of Europe report, which means it was additional than 25% larger than the European median price. In 2019, there were 8.4 suicides for just about every 10,000 inmates in Spain.

Reporting by Horaci Garcia, Albert Gea and Catherine Macdonald, crafting by Joan Faus and Inti Landauro, enhancing by Andrei Khalip

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