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Tale of British brutality toward Barack Obama's grandfather probably untrue, book claims
The story of how the President's grandfather was jailed by British troops in 1949 and brutally whipped for aiding the violent struggle for Kenyan independence is probably untrue, a new book has concluded. It is a harrowing tale of torture in a colonial prison in Kenya that is said to explain the President's coolness towards Britain and even his removal of Winston Churchill's bust from the Oval Office. David Maraniss, the author of Mr Obama's most comprehensive biography so far, said five associates of Hussein Onyango Obama doubt he was even jailed. One told him: "People make up stories". Mr Onyango, a Muslim convert who worked for the British Army in Burma during the Second World War, was accused of sympathising with the burgeoning pro-independence movement that eventually turned into the Mau Mau rebellion in 1952. Mr Obama wrote in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, that his grandfather "was placed in a detention camp" after being reported as a subversive "to the white man" by a rival land-owner. After his release, "he was very thin and dirty", he "had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice," wrote Mr Obama, who was told the story by relatives during his first visit to Kenya in 1988. Posted by: tipper 2012-06-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=346793 |