Photos do not show British passport of former U.S. President Obama
The passport belongs to Barack Hussein Obama, father of the former U.S. president
CLAIM: Images re-emerged on social media on April 12 of a British passport belonging to Barack Hussein Obama listing a Kenyan province as the holder’s place of birth. Social media users claimed the passport belongs to former U.S. President Barack Obama.
RATING: The photos have been misrepresented and the passport belongs to Barack Hussein Obama, father of the former U.S. president.
BACKGROUND
On April 12, photos emerged on the Twitter account of Malik Obama, the half-brother of former U.S. President Barack Obama, showing a British passport issued in Nairobi, Kenya, listing a "Mr. Barack Hussein Obama" as the bearer.
"I tried to get fake ass to put this in his library but he wouldn't," Malik Obama tweeted.
The images were reshared by far-right radio host Stew Peters, who claimed the photos proved the former U.S. President was born in Kenya.
"Malik Obama is dropping docs proving Barack Obama was born in Nairobi, Kenya and was thus a FAKE and ILLEGITIMATE President," Peters tweeted on April 12.
The sharing of images in recent days saw the emergence of the ‘birther’ conspiracy, a theory that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the United States and therefore was not eligible to serve as President.
Despite the fact that Obama's birth certificate and other official documents showed that he was born in Hawaii, some proponents of the birther theory continue to insist that he was born in Kenya or another foreign country.
METHOD
A 2012 book entitled “Barack Obama Sr.: The Rise and Life of a True African Scholar”, authored by Malik Obama, shows several images of passports captioned as belonging to Barack Obama Sr. (see pages 384 to 389).
The photos contained in the 2012 publication are an exact match for the images shared by Malik Obama on April 12.
From this we can conclude that the images shared by Malik Obama on April 12 are of Barack Obama Sr, and not of former U.S. President Barack Obama.
RATING: The photos have been misrepresented and the passport belongs to Barack Hussein Obama, father of the former U.S. President.