His paranoia isn't completely unfounded. I've lost count of the number of people that I've known that have been beaten by the police while in questioning. San Pedro has a particularly bad record of people dying while in custody. Note: "fell and fainted" in that article is likely code for "got the crap beat out of him by police."

Also, if he's on the Prime Minister's bad side, it wouldn't surprise me terribly if either police or thugs were sent to deal with him. Poisoning his dogs is a bit of a stretch though. Sounds more like an angry neighbor.

That said, I doubt any of that would happen to McAfee. He's too white American and too high profile for the normal shenanigans that they pull on people too poor to afford a lawyer.