A RELATIVE of US President Barack Obama is suing her employer after alleging her life was made a misery by co-workers who would fart by her desk.

Marie Auma, a niece of Obama’s stepmother who attended his 2009 inauguration, is suing the Metropolitan Police in London claiming she was ‘belittled and humiliated’, the Evening Standard reported.

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Auma, who worked at Southwark Police Station, said two co-workers would regularly break wind by her desk in part of a ‘21st century bullying’ campaign, a court heard.

The 57-year-old, whose job involved liaising with crime victims, is seeking $A870,761 in compensation in a trial at Central London County Court. Her former employer denies liability.

The alleged harassment began when she was refused leave to visit her brother’s grave after he died in a car crash in Kenya in 2007. She was finally medically retired with mental health difficulties.

Her barrister Lorraine Mensah told Judge Simon Freeland QC that although few of the individual incidents which took place from 2007 to 2009 could be described harassment, combined they formed a ‘culture’ of bullying.

When she complained about being refused permission to visit Kenya, she was branded a trouble-maker in the police force’s ‘rumour mill’, Mensah said.

She said there was a ‘pack mentality’ and that the rumours led directly to an officer and another civilian employee deliberately breaking wind at her desk.

“Most of the behaviour was open,” said Mensah. “The passing of wind at her desk in an open plan office was an attempt to belittle and humiliate her.”

Auma was eventually moved to another unit at Rotherhithe police station, in southeast London, where she claims she was still treated differently to her colleagues by more senior staff, who treated her as a trouble-maker.

There was a ‘culture of over-zealous, oppressive managing’ of Auma, who was also forced to take ‘inappropriate‘ breaks, making it difficult for her to meet her work targets, Mensah said.

“There was clear evidence that she was suffering stress, causing her ill health, and she attributed that to the bullying and harassment that she complained of,” she said.

The trial continues before Central London County Court.