Book links Obama to massacre of Christians

Barack Obama and Raila Odinga

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has continued to support Kenya's Raila Odinga, even after Odinga has been blamed for inciting tribal violence and slaughtering Christians, according to an explosive new book written by WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi.

In "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," Corsi argues that Odinga's protests following his loss to U.S.-backed Mwai Kibaki in Kenya's 2007 presidential election led to a wave of tribal and religious violence aimed against Kibaki's majority Kikuyu tribe.

The violence Obama's ally was blamed for included the slaughter of some 50 Pentecostal Christians.

As WND reported earlier, during his first visit to Kenya as a U.S. Senator in 2006, Obama openly campaigned for Odinga, to the point where Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua accused Obama of meddling inappropriately in Kenyan presidential politics. Mutua charged during a television news video that Obama had become a "stooge" to Odinga during the Kenyan presidential election campaign. Obama's father belonged to the same Luo tribe as Odinga.

In the disputed Dec. 27, 2007, presidential vote, Odinga charged he was denied winning the presidency by voter fraud.

After the election, Odinga pressed for a power-sharing arrangement in which he would be the prime minister in a government where Kibaki was president, with the two factions sharing a 50-50 power split in the cabinet.

Odinga's claim led to widespread fighting that killed more than 1,000 people in the weeks after the election, leaving more than 350,000 Kenyans displaced.

While proving involvement is difficult, many in Kenya assumed the post-election violence was supported, if not organized, behind the scenes by Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement party.

In a horrifying incident following the election, at least 50 people, including women and children, were killed when an angry mob forced Kikuyu Christians into an Assemblies of God Pentecostal church and set fire to the church, hacking with machetes any of the Christians who tried to escape the flames.

The violence occurred in the village of Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi. The massacre in the church was part of youth gang violence aimed at harassing the Kikuyu Christian minority, which before the election numbered around 20 percent of Eldoret's 500,000 people.

After the church burning, the vast majority of Eldoret’s Kikuyu Christian minority fled the city, in fear of their lives.

A Reuters video documented the Eldoret church massacre:

Christian missionaries report over 300 Christian churches were severely damaged or destroyed in the violence that swept the country, but mosques were left undisturbed.

Another horrific report came from the Telegram in London, reporting the wave of post-election violence involved members of President Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe being attacked in Nairobi slums by ethnic groups including gangs of Luo tribe youth and men who were engaging in gang rapes of women and sodomizing boys as young as five years of age.

The Telegraph reported the vast majority of the victims were assaulted in their homes and all had been targeted because of their Kikuyu tribe membership.

Mobs slashed their way into homes, attacking everyone they found with machetes and clubs. Youths raped women in front of their husbands and many wives were then dragged from their homes and killed.

In the final days of the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary, after the post-election violence in Kenya, Obama told reporters he had telephoned Raila Odinga by telephone.

Obama sided with Odinga, indicating Odinga was willing to meet with Kibaki.

"Obviously he [Odinga] believes that the votes were not tallied properly," Obama told reporters, almost as if he were running for election in Kenya. "But what I urged was that all the leaders there, regardless of their position on the election, tell their supporters to stand down, to desist with the violence and resolve it in a peaceful way with Kenyan laws."

Reporters asked if Obama had telephoned Kenyan President Kibaki.

"I have not spoken to President Kibaki as yet," the senator answered, "but I hope to get in touch with him some time soon. I want to see if I can be helpful."

It is unclear whether Obama ever spoke with Kibaki, after a rough initial meeting during Obama’s 2006 Kenyan trip.