British tortured Obama's grandfather
KENYA | Paternal grandfather abused by colonial troops during uprising after WWII, stepgrandmother tells paper
President-elect Barack Obama's grandfather endured horrific torture by the British during the Kenyan uprising against colonial rule more than 50 years ago, Obama's stepgrandmother has told the Times of London.
That violent strand of Obama's complicated family history has left some in Britain wondering how it might affect relations between America and, traditionally, one of its closest allies.
(Andy Isaacson/For the Sun-Times)
Hussein Onyango Obama -- whom the future president never met -- spent two years in a high-security prison in Kenya while the British tried to get him to spill what he knew about the insurgency, said Sarah Onyango, Obama's stepgrandmother and his grandfather's third wife.
"He said they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods," Sarah Onyango said in Wednesday's edition of the Times. "They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down."
Obama's grandfather became involved with the Kenyan uprising while he worked as a cook for a British army officer after World War II. Hussein Obama was arrested in 1949.
"His job as cook to a British army officer made him a useful informer for [the rebellion]," Onyango said.
Obama's grandfather was taken to a maximum-security prison outside of Nairobi, Onyango said.
"The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening [until] he confessed," said Onyango, who is 87 and the woman Obama refers to as "Granny Sarah."
The torture left Obama's grandfather permanently scarred.
"That was the time we realized that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies," Onyango said. "My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained."
One British commentator speculated this week that Obama's view of Britain may be more complicated and less adoring than that of past U.S. presidents.
"When he hears an English accent, I suspect, the new president will not automatically think of Churchill, Benny Hill or Princess Diana, but rather of some nameless British colonial officer, gazing out on an Africa he believed he owned: for that is where Obama is coming from," wrote the Times' Ben Macintyre.