Deportation looms for McAfee

Software guru John McAfee, fighting deportation to Belize, was rushed to a hospital in Guatemala on Thursday shortly after his request for asylum was rejected, but a suspected heart attack turned out to be stress in a fresh twist to the saga.

The 67-year-old US computer software pioneer was taken swiftly from a hospital in a police car out of the sight of media, after earlier arriving in an ambulance lying on a stretcher.

His lawyer said he was being taken back to an immigration department cottage where he has been detained since crossing illegally into Guatemala from neighboring Belize, where police want to question him in connection with his neighbor's murder.

"He never had a heart attack, nothing like that," said Telesforo Guerra, a former attorney general who had earlier said McAfee had two mild heart attacks.

"I'm not a doctor. I'm just telling you what the doctors told me," he added. "He was suffering from stress, hypertension and tachycardia (an abnormally fast heartbeat)."

Guerra's assistant, Karla Paz, earlier said she found McAfee lying on the ground and 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 earlier 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 rather than rush to a decision.

"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 a fellow American, Gregory Faull, with whom he had quarreled. 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 around $US2 million he says it is trying to hustle out of him, he said.

Belize's prime minister denies this and said McAfee, who made millions from the internet anti-virus software that bears his name, was "bonkers." McAfee later lost much of his fortune and turned to a life of semi-reclusion by the Belizean beach.

Guatemala's government originally said the eccentric tech entrepreneur, who loves guns and young women and has tribal tattoos covering his shoulders, would be expelled to Belize within hours. But it later rowed back.

On the island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived for about four years, residents and neighbors say he is eccentric and at times unstable. He was seen to travel with armed bodyguards, sporting a pistol tucked into his belt.

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.