A lawyer for John McAfee said Tuesday that a judge has ordered the software company founder released from a Guatemalan detention centre where he has been fighting being returned to Belize. Attorney Telesforo Guerra said the judge notified him verbally of the ruling, but added that it might take a day for formal written notification to win McAfee's release, possibly as soon as Wednesday.

Judge Judith Secaida did not immediately return phone calls seeking to confirm the ruling.

Guerra said Secaida ruled that McAfee's detention was illegal, ordered him released, and gave him 10 days to put his immigration situation in order. It was not immediately clear if McAfee could get some kind of temporary or transit visa to allow him to leave Guatemala.

McAfee has said he wants to return to the United States with his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend. Guerra said that would be his client's best option. "For me, it's best that McAfee go to the United States, that's definitely the country where he will be safest," Guerra said. "In Guatemala, he runs the risk that anything could happen to him."

In a live-stream internet broadcast Sunday from the Guatemalan detention centre where he was put under the government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old McAfee said he wants to return to the United States and "settle down to whatever normal life" he can. "I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years," he said.