Author of Obama book thrown out of Kenya

The author of Obama Nation, a consistently unflattering depiction of the Democratic presidential candidate, missed his own book launch in Nairobi today after Kenyan police arrested him on immigration charges and whisked him to the airport for deportation.

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Jerome Corsi, an American whose book seems to have been written expressly to damage Barack Obama’s chance at the ballot box next month, was taken from his hotel early today, just hours before he was due formally to launch the title in Kenya, the homeland of the candidate’s late father.

Kenyan officials insisted that the action was taken because Mr Corsi had arrived in the country without the necessary work permit. The speed with which he was spirited out of the capital suggested, however, that the government wanted to save itself any embarrassment that the writer’s presence may have caused. Mr Obama, unsurprisingly, is a revered figure among a majority of Kenyans.

“We have nothing to do with the book or whoever it’s about,” a police official said. “It’s about the law of Kenya.” The book’s full title is The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.

It was another book by Mr Corsi – Unfit for Command – that, according to some observers, helped doom John Kerry’s bid for the White House in 2004. Many of the claims in Obama Nation – for instance that Mr Obama was once a Muslim and that he was and still may be a drug user – have been debunked by the web site fightthesmears.com, which is run by the Obama campaign.

The invitation to today’s launch event said the book would “expose deep secret ties between the US Democratic presidential candidate and a section of the Kenyan government.” Mr Corsi was also due to visit George Obama, a half brother of the candidate living in a Nairobi slum, and hand him a cheque for $1,000 (£570).

Mr Corsi’s publicist in Nairobi, Peter Mbae, insisted that the immigration claims were bogus. “His papers were in order. His passport was fine, his visa was fine. But the government did not want him to launch his book on Kenyan soil. That’s why he has been deported.”