NAIROBI - The American author of a best-selling book attacking Barack Obama is being detained in Kenya because he does not have a work permit, a senior immigration official said yesterday.
Jerome Corsi, who wrote “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” was being held at immigration headquarters in Nairobi after police picked him up from his hotel Tuesday, said Carlos Maluta, a senior immigration official in charge of investigations.
“We still haven’t decided what to do with him,” Maluta told The Associated Press.
A call to a Corsi aide in the U.S. rang unanswered Tuesday.
Maluta said Corsi did not have a temporary work permit needed to conduct business in Kenya. Corsi had been scheduled to launch his book Tuesday in Kenya, where the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate is wildly popular.
Obama’s late father, whom he barely knew, was a Kenyan economist and the candidate is considered by many Kenyans as a native son. Minibuses are emblazoned with his picture and vendors sell T-shirts bearing his image.
Obama was born in Hawaii, where he spent most of his childhood raised by his mother, a white American from Kansas.
An article in Kenya’s oldest newspaper, The Standard, described Corsi’s book as “a smear crusade.”
Corsi’s book claims the Illinois senator is a dangerous, radical candidate for president and includes innuendoes and false rumors — that he was raised a Muslim, attended a radical, black church and is secretly seething with “black rage.”
Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and his campaign picks apart the book’s claims on the Obama campaign’s rumor-fighting Web site, FightTheSmears.com.
According to a statement announcing Corsi’s visit, he arrived last week at the invitation of Christian missionaries concerned about the rise of Islam. Corsi was planning to file daily dispatches all week, the statement said.
Obama’s Kenyan uncle, Said Obama, said he was unaware of Corsi’s detention.
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