Kenyan police free Obama's half brother, George

NAIROBI, Jan. 31, 2009 (Xinhua) --

Editor: Yan

The Kenyan authorities confirmed on Saturday they have released the half brother of U.S. President Barack Obama, George Obama, who was arrested on Friday on a charge of possession of marijuana.

Police sources told Xinhua that George Obama who lives in Huruma residential estate in Nairobi was briefly arrested for being in possession of two rolls of bhang (cannabis).

"He was released on Saturday evening with no charges preferred against him," said a senior police official who declined to be named. "He was picked up in Nairobi's Huruma area with three other young men," he said.

George Obama and the U.S. president barely know each other, though they have met before. George Obama is one of the president's few close relatives who did not go to the inauguration in Washington.

George, who works as an apprentice mechanic, is the last of the late Barack Obama Senior's eight children by four mothers.

He has only met his half-brother twice and recently said that he was not invited to President Obama's inauguration in Washington DC but would have really liked to go.

The 24-year-old George was just six months old when his father died in a car crash and lives with his mother's relatives in the Nairobi slum of Huruma.

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