Barack Obama's half-brother was denied entry to Britain after being accused of a serious crime on an earlier visit, the Home Office has confirmed

Samson Obama, who lives in Kenya, was on his way to the presidential inauguration in January 2010 when he was stopped at East Midlands Airport. Fingerprint tests linked him to a sex attack on a British girl. He was questioned but not charged over the incident in Berkshire. A Home Office spokesman said Samson Obama was denied a visa after immigration officers noticed one of his documents was false. That led them to further inquiries. Samson Obama, who runs a mobile phone shop outside Nairobi, had been planning to make a short break in Britain on his way to Washington. He eventually took a connecting flight to the United States without formally entering Britain. A British Border Agency spokesman said in general, Britain would oppose the entry of individuals where their presence was "not conducive to the public good". Samson Obama is one of several half-siblings of the president. Barack Obama Sr left his son when he was two years old and lived most of his life in Kenya, where he fathered a number of other sons and a daughter with three other wives. He died in a car crash in 1982.