Obituary

Amin, Uganda's bloody slayer, can kill no more

In the 1970s, he ordered the executions of tens of thousands of his people. But he dies Saturday quietly, never punished.

KAMPALA, Uganda - For many Ugandans, the death of former dictator Idi Amin on Saturday severed the last link to an era best forgotten: eight years of brutal rule defined by the deaths of up to 300,000 people and the memory of thousands of hastily disposed bodies collecting in Lake Victoria.

But 25 years after he went into exile, some found it galling that Amin was never punished for bringing so much misery to what had been a prosperous country. He never expressed remorse and whiled away his later years fishing and taking strolls on the beach in Saudi Arabia.

"He should have lived longer to repent. He's now gone, he's dead, and it's beyond our human control; but he's going to face eternal judgment," said the Rev. Alfred Ocur, an Anglican priest from Lira.

Amin died at 8:20 a.m. in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where he had sought exile after his government was ousted in 1979. He had been on life support since July 18 and had suffered kidney failure. He was believed to be 80.

Amin was buried in Jiddah's Ruwais cemetery after sunset prayers Saturday, said a person close to the family. Few people had attended the funeral. The Ugandan government had allowed Amin's family to bury him in Uganda, but would not allow a state funeral.

Although the front pages of Uganda papers were splashed with headlines proclaiming "Idi Amin is Dead," reaction was muted. The last 25 years saw a generation of Ugandans grow up with no memory of Amin.

Amin took power in a 1971 military coup that overthrew the government of President Milton Obote. Amin, a gregarious and popular army chief and one-time heavyweight boxing champion of Uganda, promised to abolish Obote's secret police, institute economic reforms and quickly return the nation to civilian rule.

Instead, he destroyed the Ugandan economy by expelling the country's Indian population, slashed domestic spending to pay for the armed forces and his police and security details, made enemies of most of his neighbors and instituted a reign of terror in which more than 200,000 Ugandans were tortured to death or executed.

During his rule, his atrocities horrified the world that also found his buffoonish antics and pronouncements fascinating. In this country, he probably became sub-Saharan Africa's best-known ruler. He was a staple of late-night television talk show monologues. Punch, Britain's legendary humor magazine, ran a weekly column supposedly written by Amin. The columns were compiled in a best-selling book.

In his early days in power, Amin could seem a charismatic man of the people. Something of a national celebrity since his reign as the country's heavyweight champ from 1951 to 1960, the athletic, 6-foot-4, 250-pound ruler would dance in the streets in public festivals and was known to dive into pools while wearing his bemedaled uniform. In those days he could play the clown and gregariously entertain westerners.

But Godfrey Lule, Amin's onetime attorney general, was quoted as saying: "For too long, Amin has been considered a clown. Indeed, he is a clown when he chooses. Face to face, he is relaxed, simple and charming. He seems incapable of wrong-doing or of sanctioning any crime. But this is no more than a facade. He is at heart a manipulator."

Lule concluded "He kills rationally and coolly."

As Amin's rule wore on, he became increasingly irrational. He added such titles as field marshal, president for life, conqueror of the British Empire and King of Scotland. His uniforms often tore from the weight of the many medals hanging from them.

Stories about atrocities appeared. Some of the first involved the officers who had not supported Amin in the coup. Flying squads of executioners arrived at bases across the country, slaughtering untold numbers of officers and soldiers.

Most were shot, but prominent ones were beheaded and their heads stored in a freezer in Amin's residence. Amin would periodically remove them from the freezer, place them around his dinner table and carry out "conversations" with them.

He once had Kenyan students in Uganda executed to show his displeasure with actions taken by the Kenyan government. He expelled Indians and other Asians from Uganda (and executed those who did not leave quickly enough for him) after he supposedly received a message from God during a dream.

He fought coup attempts, real and imagined, by mass executions of groups and people he came to mistrust. Among those to die were an archbishop and nearly the nation's entire precoup officer corps. Most of their bodies were fed to Nile reptiles.

In 1978, he sought to take attention from an attempted coup by invading Tanzania's western province of Kagera. Three thousand Ugandan infantry and the Ugandan air force devastated the region, executing civilians and destroying property and animals.

The Tanzanian army launched a counterattack with Ugandan exiles that swiftly brought an end to Amin's regime. Amin, along with his four wives, several of his 30 mistresses and about 20 of his children fled to Libya, where Amin, who was said to be a Muslim convert, was offered sanctuary.

He was asked to leave after a violent dispute between his bodyguards and Libyan authorities. He lived for a time in Iraq before settling in Saudi Arabia, where he was given asylum "in the name of Islamic charity."

Idi Amin Dada was born in Uganda's west Nile province of Koboko. His father, a Muslim, was a member of the Kakwa tribe that also lives in the Congo and Sudan. His mother was a member of the Lugbara tribe, which practiced witchcraft.

Amin spoke the Kiswahili, gained a fourth-grade education and became an accomplished swimmer, boxer and rugby player.

In 1946, with Uganda a British protectorate, he joined Britain's King's African Rifles as a cook. He won rapid promotion in the regiment, whose officers were British. Promoted to corporal in 1948, he was a sergeant-major and platoon commander by 1958. The next year, he was made a warrant officer with the rank of effendi, the highest rank held by Africans.

In 1961, with Ugandan independence two years away, he was one of the first two Ugandans to become a commissioned officer. With independence, he made a rapid rise in the ranks to major general and then was chief of the general staff before leading the 1971 coup.

Superficially, he seemed a popular, skilled and charismatic leader. He had passed the Israeli paratroop course and led troops in Kenya during the bloody Mau Mau rebellion. But the all-but-illiterate officer had marks against him for atrocities in Kenya, where British and African soldiers had also questioned his courage.

His dislike of most foreigners became evident when he took power. His expulsion of 50,000 Asians, whose ancestors had come to Uganda generations ago as laborers for the British and became Uganda's premier traders and businessmen, ruined the economy. Foreign and domestic trade became crippled, which led to problems with currency, balance of payment and unemployment.

He gave the Asians' homes and businesses to favored military officers to ensure their loyalty. Salaries and perks for officers and security officials from favored tribes increased enormously. Those from less-favored ethnic groups were executed or died in mysterious "traffic accidents."

The British and the Israelis refused to sell Uganda more arms as Uganda's business and financial reserves plunged and it became obvious Amin was far from a benevolent dictator.

Amin's response was to turn to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. He pledged to the Libyan that he planned to turn Uganda, where about 16 percent of the population was Muslim, into a Muslim state. Money and arms began to pour into Uganda.

Amin, who gave speeches on the glories of Adolf Hitler's war against the Jews, at one time announced plans to build a statue in the Nazi's honor in Kampala. Amin became a close friend to Palestinian extremist groups. He soon had the aid of more than 400 Palestinian military advisers and manned his bodyguard corps with Palestinians.

In 1976, pro-Palestinian guerrillas hijacked an Air France passenger jet over Greece and flew the plane and 91 Jewish hostages to Entebbe airport in Uganda. Amin, who might have known of the plans for the hijacking, agreed to guard the hostages at the airport while negotiations concerning their release dragged on.

Israeli troops flew to Entebbe, and, in a brilliant action, overpowered the Ugandan soldiers and freed the hostages. Amin was furious. Learning that many of the officers and men had been drunk, he had more than 200 senior officers and government civilian officials executed.

Things began to go from bad to worse for Amin. The price of coffee, the country's leading cash crop, plummeted. Armed rebellion swept the southwest of the country, and coup attempts multiplied even as his executioners kept up a hectic pace.

Even the Libyans began to cause trouble, dramatically cutting aid back while asking for an accounting of money they had given. They questioned the success of his efforts to transform Uganda into a Muslim nation.

- Information from the Associated Press and the Washington Post was used in this report.

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