Kenya Deports Anti-Obama Book Author
Jeffrey Gettleman - International Herald Tribune
Oct 08, 2008
The American author of a best-selling book highly critical of Senator Barack Obama was detained Tuesday by Kenyan immigration agents as he prepared to give a news conference in Nairobi.
Jerome Corsi, the conservative gadfly who wrote "The Obama Nation," in which he attacks the Democratic presidential candidate, was being held Tuesday because he was trying to work in Kenya without a valid work permit, according to local media reports.
The reports said that Corsi would probably be deported.
Elias Njeru, a spokesman for Kenya's immigration department, said, "His immigration forms were not in order."
When asked if Corsi would be deported, Njeru said that he did not know and that Corsi was still being investigated.
"I don't know whether he came here to work, but his papers indicated he was a visitor," he said. "If he was going to work, he would need different papers. When he arrived, he said he was a visitor on holiday. If he started to work, that would be the problem."
Eric Kiraithe, Kenya's police spokesman, said he had heard the reports of Corsi's arrest and was pushing the immigration department to release more information. "I've just sent an officer to the immigration department and I should get more on this soon," he said.
Many Kenyans would be very sensitive about Obama, the Democratic contender in the U.S. presidential election. His father was Kenyan and many people here are cheering him on. His photos have been plastered across the back of mini-buses and stories about the election are front page news almost every day.
But affection for Obama is not universal, especially within the divided Kenyan government.
Several government officials, including some aligned with President Mwai Kibaki, have distanced themselves from Obama, saying he is American, not Kenyan, and asking why his candidacy is such a big deal.
One explanation is Obama's criticism of some of Kenya's leaders as corrupt. Another is the ethnic tensions that divide Kenya and that plunged the country into chaos this year.
Obama's father, who died more than 20 years ago, was a member of the Luo ethnic group, the same group as Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga.
Kibaki is a member of another large ethnic group, the Kikuyu. Odinga nearly defeated Kibaki in an election last December that was tainted by widespread allegations of vote-rigging by Kibaki's party.
Violence erupted and fighting between Kikuyus and Luos, among others, killed more than 1,000 people, shaking Kenya in the worst strife since independence in 1963.
Corsi's attacks on Obama are similar to those in "Unfit for Command," a book he co-authored in 2004 that helped derail Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign by questioning his record as an officer during the Vietnam War.
Among his allegations in "The Obama Nation" is that Obama is a radical liberal who has tried to cover up "extensive connections to Islam" - Obama is Christian - and that Obama has maintained secret ties with certain Kenyan politicians.
Obama's campaign and others have disputed many of the allegations in the book.
Corsi was preparing Tuesday morning to give a news conference about his book at a big hotel in central Nairobi.
Dozens of purple chairs and a microphone had been set up. The room was soon deserted.
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Copyright 2008 by International Herald Tribune
