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Opinion: Anti-Barack Obama author detained while promoting his book in Kenya

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Jerome Corsi, the author of a controversial book attacking Barack Obama, has been detained in Kenya and is expected to be deported, The Times’ Nairobi bureau chief, Edmund Sanders, reports.

Corsi is the author of ‘The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,’ a bestselling book whose assertions -- that Obama was raised a Muslim and is secretly seething with ‘black rage’ -- have been widely dismissed as false and based on little more than the author’s desire to derail the Democrat’s presidential candidacy.

Corsi arrived in Kenya Thursday to promote the book and to investigate Obama’s ties to Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, according to a news release sent to the media by Corsi’s publisher last week. In a chapter of Corsi’s book titled ‘Kenya, Odinga, Communism, and Islam,’ the author claims Obama gave Odinga $1 million for his 2007 presidential campaign -- a claim both Obama and Odinga deny.

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Corsi was detained on Tuesday by Kenyan immigration officials for failing to obtain the proper visa needed to work in the country. He told the Associated Press that he expects to be deported soon.

Obama, whose father was Kenyan and mother was American, is wildly popular in Kenya and the U.S. election is being closely followed in the country.

Corsi played a role in the 2004 presidential election with a book attacking that year’s Democratic nominee, John Kerry. ‘Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry’ hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. ‘The Obama Nation’ spent four weeks at the top of the bestseller list.

-- Kate Linthicum

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