-
George Hussein Obama - Source: Reuters -
Related
A Kenyan half brother of US President Barack Obama said he was briefly arrested at his home in a slum on suspicion of drugs' possession.
"I think it was a misunderstanding. I do not do drugs," George Hussein Obama, 27, told Reuters from Nairobi's Huruma slum, where he was picked up for a few hours on Sunday (NZT).
"They released me with no charge."
Local media quoted police saying Obama, who works as a mechanic, had been found with two rolls of marijuana.
Kenya's leading newspaper, the Nation, said he would be charged in court on Tuesday (NZT). But Obama said that was untrue, and police officials refused to comment.
"I don't know what you are talking about," area police chief Jasper Ombati told Reuters, before hanging up the phone.
George Obama hardly knows his brother, the first black president of the United States, who is hero-worshipped in Kenya due to his ancestral roots.
During the US election campaign, some right-wing US commentators said the lowly circumstances of George Obama showed Barack Obama's double standards.
But George Obama said at the time he was happy with his life and his case had been exaggerated for political ends. In his memoirs, Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama recalls meeting George Obama briefly on a visit to Kenya when the latter was a boy at a school in Nairobi.
"I am very tired of all this," George Obama said of the media fuss over his family links.
