PEOPLE

Obama's half-brother denied UK visa
04/29/09, Bunmi Akpata-Ohohe

Samson Obama, 41, one of President Barack Obama's 11 half-brothers and sisters has been refused a visa to re-enter the UK after reportedly being questioned by police over an attempted sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl on his last visit and receiving a caution for a public order offence. Samson Obama was on his way to the president's inauguration in January from his home in Kenya when he tried to stop over in Britain to visit relatives. But immigration officers declined to issue him a visa on the grounds of deception.

Obama is alleged to have been living illegally in Britain when he was arrested in Berkshire last November after approaching a group of young girls, one aged 13, and allegedly attempted to sexually assault one of them. Police was called in and he was arrested and questioned. He allegedly told detectives that he was Henry Aloo, a genuine asylum-seeker, but gave the address of his mother, Kezia in Bracknell. He denied any sex attack, but reportedly accepted an official caution for a public order offence. In Britain a caution is an admission of a criminal offence.

Meanwhile in Boston Massachusetts, USA, the president's father's half-sister, Auntie Zeituni Onyango, has been allowed to stay in the country for another 11 months until a new immigration hearing on February 4 2010, after pleading with a judge last month at a closed-door hearing not to deport her to Kenya. Onyango is trying to overturn a 2004 deportation order after her failed application for political asylum.