‘I’ll get answers’: John McAfeer’s widow blames US for death | Business and Economic News

Janice McAfee said her husband John was not suicidal and called for an in-depth investigation into the death in Spanish prison on Tuesday.

U.S. software widow John McAfee on Friday blamed U.S. authorities for his death in a Spanish prison while awaiting extradition to the U.S., and said he was not suicidal.

Janice McAfee said she wanted an in-depth investigation into the circumstances of the 75-year-old’s death, when what happened in her jail cell on Wednesday was allegedly a suicide by hanging by authorities.

Dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, outside the Brians 2 prison in Barcelona, ​​where her husband had been detained since October, she told reporters that she had last spoken to him a few hours before she was found dead.

“His last words were‘ I love you and I’ll call you in the evening ’, those words are not the words of a suicide bomber,” he said, holding back tears.

“I blame the US authorities for this tragedy. He was politically motivated because of this charge, my husband is dead, ”she said, adding that she intended to appeal the Spanish high court ruling, which was published a few hours before her death, to extradite her charges against tax evasion.

A spokesman for the US embassy said: “Local authorities are closely monitoring the investigation into the cause of death, and we are ready to provide adequate support to the family. At this difficult time out of respect for the family, we have no further comment.”

McAfee, a British-born company, launched the world’s first commercial antivirus software program in 1987 when it was arrested last October at Barcelona airport. He had been fleeing U.S. authorities for years, some of them at the time aboard a megayacht.

He was indicted in Tennessee on charges of tax evasion and charged in a cryptocurrency fraud case in New York.

Janice McAfee called her husband a fighter “she hoped things would go well,” she added, “I don’t think she did that, I’ll get answers.”

McAfee’s lawyer, Javier Villalba, said he is awaiting the results of the official family autopsy, but will request a second independent autopsy as ordered by the McAfee family, who said he could take legal action after the investigation into the death.

McAfee was sharing his cell with another inmate but was alone when he died, a prison source said.

The Department of Justice of Catalonia has opened an internal investigation into the death.

The suicide rate in Spanish prisons was placed in the “very high” category in a 2020 European Council report, which was 25 per cent higher than the European average. In 2019, there were 8.4 suicides per 10,000 prisoners in Spain.