The Kenyan bowed his head as his captors opened the prison cell door
to deliver another brutal whipping – a punishment meted out after he was
accused of taking part in the independence movement against the British
colonial authorities.
The man had been working as a cook for a British Army officer.
And his name? Hussein Onyango Obama – President Barack Obama's paternal
grandfather.
He had been arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a
high-security prison. There, according to his family, he was subjected
to horrific violence. They say British soldiers used torture in an
effort to get him to reveal rebel secrets.
A family together: Barack Obama (back row,
second left) with Granny Sarah (front, second right) in 1988
'The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip
him every morning and evening till he repented,' says Sarah Onyango,
Hussein Onyango's third wife, and the woman President Obama calls
'Granny Sarah'
.