Corsi Falls Ill After Kenya Caper
Red Alert temporarily postponed until author’s recovery from traumatic abduction
Posted: October 13, 2008
10:51 am Eastern
WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi, WND senior staff reporter and editor of Red Alert, has fallen ill after he was forced to endure detention at the hands of armed Kenyan immigration authorities.
WND founder and editor Joseph Farah said Corsi has arrived at his home in the United States and is now under care of a physician because he is very sick.
“Corsi is still recovering from his traumatic abduction at the hands of Kenya security officials who halted his planned press conference in Nairobi and denied him and his party food for an entire day before allowing them to depart for London,” Farah said.
The situation developed last Tuesday just as Corsi, who had been in Kenya for several days, was preparing for a morning news conference to announce the results of his investigation about Barack Obama’s controversial ties in the African nation. The investigation also targeted Raila Odinga, a Kenyan political leader who has claimed he is Obama’s first cousin.
Corsi was approached by immigration officials and taken to their office under the guard of soldiers with automatic weapons. Corsi made a quick contact with Farah, but then Kenyan authorities confiscated his passport and cell phone and held him as if he were suspected of a crime.
Under guard for most of the day, it wasn’t until many hours later when Corsi and his traveling partner and publicist, Tim Bueler, were taken to the airport for their scheduled flight and Corsi’s cell phone was returned. He then was able to dispatch to WND a report on his captivity.
“We were detained and lied to all day,” Corsi described in his urgent report to WND. “The immigration officer at the hotel 15 minutes before the press conference this morning said we only needed to come to the immigration headquarters downtown for a few minutes and that we would be back to the hotel for the press conference with only a few minutes delay.”
That wasn’t what happened.
“We got brought to immigration headquarters by what turned out to be about a dozen immigration officers plus military armed with automatic rifles,” he reported. “Tim got placed in the back of the vehicle and was surrounded by the armed military. I was in the front between the driver and the top immigration officer who first identified himself at the hotel.”
A resident of Kenya said bribes totaling thousands of dollars were paid to “various officials” during the day-long standoff between Corsi and Kenyan immigration authorities. While authorities originally claimed the men’s entry cards had been “lost” and that Corsi and Bueler had to be at the airport to help investigate what happened, a report from Kenya Broadcasting Corp. admitted it was politics, not the contrived paperwork reason, for which Corsi was detained.
The Kenyan authorities later took him to his departure flight and made it clear he was not welcome to return.
“Don’t ever come back. See you in hell,” Corsi reported an unidentified official told him as the author of the No. 1 best-selling book “The Obama Nation” was delivered to a flight departing from Nairobi to London. He is now in the United States.
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