Dying Amin receives death threats

FORMER dictator Idi Amin, blamed for the murder of tens of thousands of Ugandans in the 1970s, has received death threats at a Saudi hospital where he has been critically ill for weeks, a medical source said yesterday.

Staff at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah got the threats by telephone on Saturday, prompting managers to post a permanent guard in Amin's room and another at the entrance to intensive care, the source said. "Security measures were dramatically increased in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital where Idi Amin is staying as a result of several death threats," the source said.

Sources said last week that Amin, one of Africa's bloodiest despots, was in a "near-death-condition."