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Your link brings up a question that has been puzzling me: Did Barack Obama Sr assassinate Tom Mboya?

The first time I read Sally Jacobs article ‘A Father’s Charm, Absence’ (and also her joke of a book ‘The Other Barack’), I wondered why Barack Obama Sr’s was not considered the leading suspect in Tom Mboya’s assassination.

Here is an excerpt from Sally’s article:

‘On a hot July weekend nearly 40 years ago, Barack Obama Sr. was SHOPPING on a busy Nairobi street when he ran into his friend and mentor Tom Mboya, one of Kenya’s most charismatic political leaders. The two chatted for several minutes and Obama kidded him that his car was illegally parked.

“I told him, ‘You are parked on a yellow line. You will get a ticket,” Obama, the late father of the US presidential candidate, would later testify, according to press accounts at the time. And then the two men parted.

MINUTES LATER, Mboya was shot twice and died in a pool of blood. It was a crime that convulsed the newly independent nation and would, in Obama’s eyes, trigger a steep decline in his own promising career. Then 33, and a freshly minted government economist, he testified in the ensuing trial, an act which probably enraged those responsible for Mboya’s assassination.’

A similar account of Tom Mboya’s assassination is given in the book ‘Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya wanted to Forget by Goldsworthy’:

‘Shortly before one o’clock Mboya and Nundu left the office. Down in the Treasury car park Mboya told his driver to go home, got into his car and drove off alone. A few minutes later he drew up in Government Road outside Chhani’s Pharmacy. The shop had just closed for the weekend, but Mboya was a regular and valued customer at Chhani’s and often called there at this hour on a Saturday. ... As Mboya got out of the car a man he knew, a free-lance photographer, asked him casually what he was doing there at that time of day. `Just SHOPPING’, Mboya replied.

...Outside the shop, seven or eight feet from the door, stood a young, slightly-built African, DARK-SUITED, holding a BRIEFCASE in his left hand.’

Here is a list of evidence leading towards Barack Obama Sr as the leading suspect in Tom Mboya’s assassination:

(1) Barack Obama Sr chatted with Tom Mboya just minutes before his assassination and was shopping just as Tom Mboya said he was was shopping.

(2) The suspect was dark-suited and an elegant dresser and was carrying a briefcase as shown here:

`On July 5, 1969, a quiet Saturday afternoon, Tom Mboya returned from an official trip to Ethiopia and, at around1 p.m., stopped by a pharmacy on Government Road. As he came out of the pharmacy, a young Kikuyu named Njenga Njoroge, wearing a suit and carrying a BRIEFCASE, pulled a revolver out of his pocket. He fired twice, hitting Mboya both times in the chest. He died almost immediately.’ (’The Bridge’ by David Remnick)

Obama Sr was always known be wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase as shown below:

a)’He loved style and elegance. A tobacco pipe, a parted hairdo, and generosity were some of his conspicuous trademarks...He [Obama Sr] drove the latest car models, wore the best suits, and drank the most expensive whisky brands. ...Always neat in his dressing and sometimes sporting a brown leather jacket, he says Obama, whom they referred to as Barry, would go for the best drinks and finest brands of cigarettes.’ (’Obama’s dad and his many loves’ by John Oywa)

b)’On occasion he even sported a elegant silk tie. Whereas most students carried their books in a loose jumble, Obama chose a trim leather BRIEFCASE.’ (’The Other Barack’ pg 100)

(4) The suspected assassin Njenga was a mechanic and a sapper - making it unusual for Njenga to be wearing a suit on a Saturday afternoon.

(5) Njenga was about the same age of Obama Sr at the time.

(6) Njenga proclaimed his innocence and said he was a friend of Mboya’s as shown here:

‘Protesting his innocence, he claimed that he had known Mboya for nine years and regarded him as a friend.’ (Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya wanted to Forget)

(7) Nine witnesses to the shooting failed to identify Njenga in police line-ups.

(8) In ‘A Father’s Charm, Absence’, Obama Sr said he was the only one to have seen the assassin, but did not reveal the assassin when he testified in court. As Njenga was convicted, then what use or purpose then was Obama Sr’s testimony?

(9) The statement “His testimony was the nail in the coffin,” by Caroline Elkins (associate professor of African Studies at Harvard University) in ‘A Father’s Charm, Absence’, doesn’t make sense then as Obama Sr said he wasn’t allowed to reveal the assassin even though Njenga was convicted. Caroline Elkins statement, therefore puts her own credibility into question.