Barack Obama's brother banned from Britain over 'sex assault' lie

• 
• 

By Justin Penrose 11/04/2009

THE brother of U.S. President Barack Obama has been barred from Britain after lying to police when accused of a sexual assault.

Samson Obama – known as Abo – gave a false name to officers interviewing him after he was alleged to have tried to sexually assault a teenage girl in this country last November.

It was claimed that he approached a group of teenage girls, tried to sexually assault one of them, and then followed them into a nearby cafe. He was said to have become aggressive and was asked to leave by the owner.

The police were called and Samson was arrested.

He denied the assault and police did not prosecute him, but he accepted a police caution for a public order offence. At the time of his arrest Abo was living illegally at his mother Kezia’s house in Bracknell, Berks, but after the incident returned to his native Kenya.

And last week he had a visa application to return to Britain rejected. Home Office staff ruled that allowing him into Britain was “not conducive to the public good”.

The news will be embarrassing to the US President, who gave half-brother Abo a personal tour of the White House in January when he attended the historic inauguration. Abo, 41, and Barack, 47, are both sons of Barack Snr, a former goatherder from Kenya.

Abo’s mother Kezia was Barack Senior’s first wife in Kenya and the president’s mother is his second wife Ann Denham, a white American from Kansas.

Barack Snr left America in 1965 with his third wife to return to Africa where he rekindled his relationship with Kezia and Abo was born. He was killed in a car crash when the President was 21.

Abo and Barack first met in 1987 when Barack traced his family in Kenya.

Ever since, they have become extremely close, meeting several times and speaking regularly on the phone. Abo’s mother, Kezia, is Barack’s stepmum and takes pride of place at family gatherings following the death of Barack’s mother Ann in 1995.

Immigration officers have discovered that at the time of his arrest Abo had been living illegally with Kezia in Bracknell for the past seven years.

He claimed to police that he was a bin man called Henry Aloo – but bizarrely gave them Kezia’s address.

His DNA, fingerprints and photograph were taken.

Abo was given a caution for a public order offence but he denied sexual assault. Detectives did not take any further action on the alleged attack.

Abo left Britain for Kenya and in January applied for a family UK visa to visit his mother Kezia, 67. He had to provide a fingerprint as part of the application and checks matched him with the man accused of the assault. Days later Abo asked for his passport back to get a visa to attend his brother’s inauguration at the White House.

Despite the British authorities knowing Abo’s past, he was allowed to overnight at Heathrow on the way to Washington in January to attend the historic event.

But when he applied again for a family visa in February he was confronted with the allegations at the UK Borders Agency office in Nairobi.

Abo denied that the offences related to him and claimed that his “passport had been stolen”. To support his visa application Abo submitted documents showing that he had a business in Nairobi – but the documents were forged, according to the Kenyan authorities.

The documents were supposed to back up his claim that he would not attempt to claim asylum in the UK, and to deny claims that he had been an illegal immigrant in the UK from 2001 to 2008.

An UK Borders Agency source said: “Nobody could believe that a close member of President Obama’s family was accused of a sex attack, even though he denied it. The fact is that when he was accused he gave another man’s identity to avoid being detected as an illegal immigrant.

“When he applied for a visa to visit his mother again we had little choice but to deny him entry.”

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: “We oppose the entry of all individuals to the UK where we believe their presence is not conducive to the public good.”

In Barack’s 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, he writes of meeting Abo for the first time and how he expressed disappointment that the portable tape recorder Barack brought for him as a gift was not a Sony.

Sphere: Related Content