Dictator Idi Amin dies; fate of remains debated in Uganda

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.

Amin died at 8:20 a.m. in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where he was exiled 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.

The government will let his relatives bury him in Uganda if they wish, but with none of the honors of a former president, said Ali Kirunda Kizejinja, the minister for the presidency. "As a government we are not going to recognize Amin as a former head of state nor offer him a state burial," he said.

Lowkey reaction

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.

President Yoweri Museveni, elected in 1996, has tried in recent years to promote unity and stability by encouraging the country to condemn Amin's violent era. Last year, Uganda officially celebrated his downfall for the first time, and the government has welcomed back those he expelled.

"We have no grudges against Amin because his era has ended," said Dalal Murtaza, the 44-year-old chairman of Uganda's 15,000-member Indian Association. "Now it's history because he is dead, and there's no point having grudges against a dead man."

A former boxing champion and British-trained soldier, Amin rose rapidly to the top of the Ugandan army after independence in 1962 and seized power on Jan. 25, 1971, ousting President Milton Obote. Ugandans initially welcomed him as a relief from Obote's dictatorship, and Amin's frequent taunting of Britain, the former colonial power, played well at home and across the continent.

But his name soon became synonymous with brutality and misrule. In 1972, Amin expelled tens of thousands of ethnic Indians who dominated the country's economy. While the move was initially popular, the eviction of most of its entrepreneurs plunged Uganda into economic chaos.

"His body should be brought back to Uganda and put on display for people to view somebody who killed so many people," said Michael Mademaga, 41, an office messenger who said Amin's agents killed his uncle in 1974 and dumped him in the Nile River east of Kampala.

Amin declared himself president-for-life and ran the country with an iron fist, killing real and imagined enemies. Former President Jimmy Carter once said Amin's rule of the east African country "disgusted the entire civilized world."

Not enough graves

There are no official records, but rights groups say his regime killed from 100,000 to 300,000 people. Bodies were dumped into Lake Victoria and Nile because graves couldn't be dug fast enough.

"Even Amin does not know how many people he has ordered to be executed. The country is littered with bodies," said Henry Kyemba, a former health minister who defected to Britain in 1977.

Still, Amin was tough to read. Some saw him as outright crazy, others believed he was a shrewd operator; he may have been both. Defenders of white racist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, often pointed to him as a reason to keep denying blacks the vote because they could elect another Idi Amin.

He was known for outlandish statements, once saying Hitler had been right to exterminate the Jews. His flair for self-aggrandizement and penchant for humiliating gestures was just as keen: He once got four white men to carry him on a chair into an Organization of African Unity meeting in a teasing reversal of colonial grandeur.

But he was deeply embarrassed in 1976 after an Air France jet with many Israeli passengers was hijacked and flown to Entebbe. Amin took charge of negotiations but made little progress. Israeli commandos flew in and rescued the captives, and though Amin claimed he had been trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution, there was evidence he was in league with the hijackers.

Amin's overreaching designs led to his downfall. After long-running tension with Tanzania, Ugandan troops tried to annex part of the country in 1978. Tanzanian troops counterattacked and invaded Uganda, capturing Kampala in April 1979.

Obote won elections in 1980 and his second administration was considered as bloody as Amin's. He was overthrown in 1986.

In exile, Amin lived in a luxurious Jiddah house with cars and domestic servants paid by the Saudi government. He would occasionally telephone journalists to talk of plans to retake Uganda or to protest cuts in his gasoline allowance.

In a rare interview in 1999, Amin told a Ugandan newspaper he liked to play the accordion, fish, swim, recite from the Quran and read. He claimed that most of his food still came from Uganda, where he was born in Koboko, a northwestern village. His mother was a self-proclaimed sorceress and his father a small farmer.

On Saturday, Amin's widow in Saudi Arabia, Nalongo Madina Amin, called the private Ugandan radio station, Central Broadcasting Service, to announce his death and said burial arrangements were under discussion.

In Kampala, one of his sons, Ali Amin Ramadhan, 40, said: "I am very sad and confused."