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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Guatemala puts software founder McAfee on flight bound for Miami
Moises Castillo / The Associated Press John McAfee leaves a detention centre in Guatemala City on Wednesday. (CP)
GUATEMALA CITY -- Anti-virus software founder John McAfee was released from a detention centre Wednesday and was escorted by immigration officials and police trucks to the Guatemala City airport, where he was put on a commercial flight bound for Miami.
McAfee sat in a coach-class seat on the flight, which took off at mid-afternoon.
The escort to the airport, accompanied by a throng of journalists and two police trucks with sirens blaring, marked the last chapter in McAfee's strange, month-long odyssey to avoid police questioning about the killing of an American expatriate in neighbouring Belize.
"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 a 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 crowded around the immigration truck carrying McAfee, straining to take pictures of him with their cellphones.
Dressed in a black suit and white shirt, McAfee said: "I'm free. I'm going to America."
He suggested his week-long 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 Belize, where authorities sought to question him about the murder of a neighbour. He apparently crossed at a rural, unguarded spot along the border, but a judge this week ruled his detention illegal and ordered him freed.
His 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, who has accompanied him since he went on the run, was not with him on the ride to the airport, though she later showed up at the terminal. She was seen earlier Wednesday leaving the detention facility crying after taking breakfast to McAfee.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 13, 2012 B7
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