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."

Amin, in his late 70s, has been in exile, chiefly in Saudi Arabia, since his ouster from his East African homeland in 1979.

A man who expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, Amin was denounced inside and outside Africa for massacring tens of thousands of people some estimates say more than 100,000 under his despotic 1971-79 rule.

A former boxing champion, he came to power in a 1971 coup and his rule was characterised by eccentric behaviour and violent purges. He was driven from power in 1979 by forces from neighbouring Tanzania and Ugandan exiles, and was given sanctuary by Saudi Arabia in the name of Islamic charity. Amin, a Muslim, has lived quietly in Jeddah on a government stipend with his four wives.