A photo of former President Barack Obama and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan from 2005 surfaced on Thursday after more than a decade of a journalist keeping the encounter under wraps.

The photo of Obama and Farrakhan was taken at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in 2005, but it never reached the public eye after the caucus asked the photographer, Askia Muhammad, to hand it over in fear that it would stain Obama’s political future.

The photo that never saw the light of day: Obama with Farrakhan in 2005 https://t.co/nUrPbYVy0q pic.twitter.com/MrjqRdJy9G — Talking Points Memo (@TPM) January 25, 2018



“I sort of understood what was going on,” Muhammad told Talking Points Memo, who was allowed to print the picture with his permission. “I promised and made arrangements to give the picture to Leonard Farrakhan,” the leader’s chief-of-staff and son-in-law.

The Congressional Black Caucus allegedly contacted Muhammad in a “panic” shortly after the event and asked him to hand over the photograph. Muhammad said he made a copy of the photograph on his computer before he gave “the disk” from his camera over to a staff member.

“Realizing that I had given it up, I mean, it was sort of like a promise to keep the photograph secret,” the photographer said, while explaining he didn’t release his copy because he didn’t want to betray that promise.

“I was really, I guess, afraid of them,” he continued. Muhammad was afraid that someone would “break into his apartment” in search of the photo, like “that Watergate crap” if he was to ever release it.

During the 2008 presidential election, Farrakhan made headlines for his alleged ties to then-Senator Obama and his anti-Semitic remarks, which Obama denounced during a debate.