BARCELONA, Spain — The widow of John McAfee, the British-American tycoon who died in a Spanish prison this week while awaiting extradition to the United States, on Friday demanded a "thorough investigation" of his death, saying her husband did not appear suicidal when they last spoke.
Authorities in Spain are conducting an autopsy on McAfee's body but have said that everything at the scene in his cell indicated that the 75-year-old killed himself.
"His last words to me were 'I love you and I will call you in the evening,'" Janice McAfee told reporters outside the Brians 2 penitentiary northwest of Barcelona where she recovered her late husband's belongings. She said they spoke earlier on the day he was found dead.
"Those words are not words of somebody who is suicidal," she added, demanding a "thorough investigation" in her first public remarks since the software entrepreneur's death on Wednesday.
John McAfee was arrested at the Barcelona airport in October last year on a warrant issued by prosecutors in Tennessee who were seeking up to three decades of imprisonment for allegedly evading more than $4 million in taxes.
The day before he was found dead, Spain's National Court had announced that it was agreeing to his extradition to the US but the decision was not final.
"We had a plan of action already in place to appeal that decision," the 38-year-old Janice McAfee told reporters. "I blame the US authorities for this tragedy: Because of these politically motivated charges against him my husband is now dead."
The National Court judge said John McAfee had provided no evidence to back his allegations that he was being politically persecuted. "On the contrary, according to his own testimony, he took part in primaries of a certain party to defend his convictions with a result little favorable to him," the judge wrote in the ruling. — Euronews
