Corsi detention orchestrated by Obama’s political friend

By WND Staff


WND senior staff writer Jerome Corsi

The Kenyan official who reportedly orchestrated the detention of WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi when he visited Kenya to investigate President-elect Barack Obama’s close ties to the nation’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, was Odinga himself, according to WND sources inside Kenya.

Corsi, whose recent book, “The Obama Nation,” raised questions about the Democrat when he was a candidate for president, had scheduled a news conference in Nairobi to discuss his discoveries during his visit this fall.

However, he was detained by immigration officials and held without food for much of a day until he was escorted onto his already-booked flight leaving Kenya with the sendoff, “See you in hell.”

Now sources inside Kenya have reported to WND that his detention was orchestrated by Odinga, not President Mwai Kibaki or Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka. Corsi, in fact, had discussed with governmental officials for the president and vice-president his findings, and they provided no objection to his scheduled press conference.

However, investigations conducted for WND by members of Odinga’s own party, the Orange Democratic Movement, reported the links to Odinga. The investigators are being left unidentified by WND for their own safety.

The Kenyan sources for WND identified the links between the detention and Odinga as a bodyguard for Odinga, identified by sources only by the name Magajo, and an immigration minister, Mr. C. Nyangeso.

Both were contacted by telephone in Kenya by WND.

Get the full story about an Obama presidency: “The Obama Nation,” by Corsi, at a special $4.95 price!

Nyangeso responded to a query from WND about who gave the orders that Corsi be detained by admitting he had information, but he would not disclose it on the phone, promising to e-mail it later. The e-mail did not arrive.

The bodyguard told WND on the telephone he also knew the source of the orders for Corsi’s detention, but he would not reveal any information before a payment of $600 would be delivered to him.

WND previously has reported Corsi, while in Kenya, shared with the offices of Kibaki and Musyoka copies of his prepared remarks for the scheduled Oct. 7 press conference in Nairobi that was shut down when he was detained by Kenyan military and immigration authorities.

“Through the day when I was detained and prevented from giving the press conference in Kenya, top Kenyan immigration officers who were Kikuyu tribesmen identified themselves and told me Odinga had made the phone calls which led to my detention,” Corsi told WND.


Sen. Barack Obama with Raila Odinga

“I had been in Kenya for a week and was planning to hold the press conference on the last day I was in Kenya,” Corsi said. “After extensive meetings with the government, I knew the office of the president and vice president knew the press conference was scheduled and had no problems with the statements I was going to make about my investigations in the country.”

Corsi’s prepared statements, published later by WND, established links between Obama and Odinga’s presidential campaign in Kenya, including documentary evidence showing Obama helped raise nearly $1 million for Odinga’s presidential campaign in three separate visits Odinga made to the U.S. with the assistance of Obama’s staff.

Corsi also was prepared to release 2006 e-mail documents handed to him in Kenya by former ODM party members and validated by the sources as authentic that established Obama designated Mark Lippert in his U.S. Senate office to be the go-between in communications with Odinga.

Lippert was identified by the Chicago Sun-Times as a member of Obama’s “inner circle of foreign policy experts” who is expected to join Obama’s White House staff.

Corsi also was prepared to present at the press conference additional confirmation of the authenticity of the memorandum of understanding Odinga signed with Sheik Abdullah Abdi, the chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum to expand Islamic law, or Shariah, in Kenya. In exchange, NAMLEF agreed to swing Muslim voters to Odinga in the December 2007 presidential election.

In Kenya, Corsi also was told by government authorities, without confirming that Obama was born in Kenya, that the government’s position was that any documents that might exist regarding Obama’s birth in Kenya were under seal or otherwise unavailable.

“I was able to interview Obama’s uncle, Sayid Obama, the brother of Obama’s father, when I was doing the research for ‘The Obama Nation,'” Corsi said. “But Auma Obama, Obama’s half-sister, declined an interview by telephone, telling me that the Obama campaign had advised the Obama family not to speak with me, either from the United States by phone, or in person in Kenya.”

Kibaki and Odinga this week created a special tribunal to investigate allegations that various Kenyan cabinet members and other prominent politicians were involved in the post-election tribal violence in which enraged Luo tribesmen rampaged after Odinga alleged voter fraud had caused him to lose the 2007 election.

As WND reported, more than 1,000 largely-Kikuyu tribal members, including women and children, were killed and up to half a million Kikuyu tribal family members were displaced in tribal violence. Odinga utilized the chaos,  with the intervention of former-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Obama,  to assume the position of prime minister in a power-sharing agreement that ended the violence.

Both Odinga and Obama’s extended family members are Luo tribe members, while Kibaki is a Kikuyu. But violence also left hundreds of Christian churches destroyed, but Islamic mosques were undamaged.

“This tribunal is just more cover-up,” Corsi said. “By acting as prime minister and assisting in forming the tribunal, Odinga is cleverly trying to move himself from the person who should be investigated for causing the tribal violence to the government authority who is doing the investigating.

“After losing the election, Odinga called on his Luo tribe supporters to take to the streets, knowing full well this was a call to violence,” Corsi charged. “The violence only ended when Odinga got what he wanted and the prime minister position was created so he could claim to be co-head of state with Kibaki.”

The Kenyan constitution has no provision to establish an office of prime minister under a government in which the president is elected by popular vote to be sole head of state.

In Kenya, Corsi was told by government authorities that Rice had asked Vice President Musyoka to step down voluntarily so Odinga could be appointed to replace him.

When Musyoka refused, Rice, in conjunction with Annan and Obama, came up with the alternative to create for Odinga the position of prime minister, disregarding the constitutionality of the move.

Kibaki and Odinga agreed to sign the bill creating the tribunal investigating the post-election violence within hours of a deadline set by the International Criminal Court.

Had the Kenyan government not acted to create the investigating tribunal, the International Criminal Court was planning to assume the authority at The Hague.

“Obama continues to remain silent about his close relationship to Odinga, for obvious reasons,” Corsi said. “Obama has no interest in the U.S. public understanding how strongly he supported Odinga, a fellow Luo tribesman, for the Kenyan presidency (and) Odinga’s willingness to sign an agreement with radical Islam and his willingness to exploit the post-election tribal violence as a way to catapult himself into a co-head of state relationship after losing the presidential election.”

WND has documented that the Kibaki government objected to what was perceived in Kenya as Obama’s endorsement of Odinga’s presidential run and his campaigning on Odinga’s behalf. The appearances came while Obama was in Kenya on a U.S. taxpayer-paid “fact-finding” visit.

Corsi had scheduled the Oct. 7 press conference on the morning of the day he was scheduled to take an 11:45 p.m. British Airways flight from Nairobi to London.

“I feared my life would be in danger once I revealed the information and documents I had uncovered in Kenya,” Corsi said, “so I scheduled to leave that evening, once I had completed the press conference and had some time to do follow-up one-on-one interviews with interested reporters.”

During his visit to Kenya, Corsi held extensive private meetings with numerous highly positioned government officials, former leaders of Odinga’s ODM party, influential Christian missionaries, African Christian pastors and various long-time experts in Kenyan politics.

About 15 minutes before the press conference was scheduled to begin at the Grand Regency Hotel in Nairobi, Corsi was confronted by about 30 Kenyan immigration officers and uniformed military armed with automatic rifles, demanding to see his passport.

Corsi was taken by the immigration authorities and detained at Nyayo House, the provincial government headquarters in Nairobi, for what turned into 13 hours of detention, during which Kenyan officials conducted an official investigation into his immigration status.

Immigration officials detaining Corsi assured him he was not under arrest and that he was not being charged with any crimes, even though they insisted he accompany them to the main Nairobi immigration building.

Corsi later was escorted by immigration officials and armed military to the airport, where his cell phone was confiscated until he was allowed to leave Kenya on his originally scheduled British Airways flight.

While escorting Corsi to the flight, an unidentified Kenyan immigration official told him, “Don’t ever come back. See you in hell.”