Story of British brutality towards Obama's grandfather in 1949 untrue, claims book

London, June 19 (ANI): The story of British troops' brutality towards US President Barack Obama's grandfather in 1949 for aiding the violent struggle for Kenyan independence is probably untrue, a new book has revealed.

David Maraniss, the author of Obama's most comprehensive biography, has revealed that five associates of Hussein Onyango Obama even doubt he was ever jailed, The Telegraph reports.

"Five people who had close connections to Hussein Onyango said they doubted the story or were certain it did not happen," Maraniss wrote in Barack Obama - The Making of the Man.

Maraniss claimed that while 'incidents of that sort certainly happened', it 'seems unlikely' that Obama's grandfather was one such victim.

Dick Opar, a former senior Kenyan police official, said he 'would have known' if Onyango had been detained. "People make up stories," Opar said.

Zablon Okatch, who worked with Onyango as a servant for American diplomats after his supposed detention, told Maraniss: "Hussein was never jailed. I know that for a fact. It would have been difficult for him to get a job with a white family, let alone a diplomat, if he once served in jail".

Even one of Onyango's daughters, Auma Magak, told Maraniss: 'He was not detained', suggesting that he had once been kidnapped by thugs and the story had been twisted through the generations.

Onyango, a Muslim convert who worked for the British Army in Burma during the Second World War, was accused of sympathizing with the burgeoning pro-independence movement that eventually turned into the Mau Mau rebellion in 1952.

Obama wrote in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, that his grandfather 'was placed in a detention camp' after being reported as a subversive 'to the white man' by a rival landowner.

After his release, 'he was very thin and dirty', he 'had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice,' Obama wrote, who was told the story by relatives during his first visit to Kenya in 1988.(ANI)