Wife and daughter fly in as Amin remains on life support

IDI AMIN’S wife and daughter flew to Saudi Arabia this week to visit the dying former dictator of Uganda, government officials in Kampala said yesterday.

“Amin’s wife and daughter left yesterday (Monday) aboard Ethiopian Airlines and they are already in Jeddah,” said Minister for the Presidency Kirunda Kivejinja

The government “facilitated” the trip, he added, without elaborating.

Hospital sources at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, one of Saudi Arabia’s top medical centres, reported earlier yesterday that the septuagenarian Amin was still in a critical condition and on a life-support machine.

“He is still alive. His condition however has not improved and he remains in a coma and on a life-support machine in the intensive care unit,” said a medical source at the hospital.

As Amin lay in a coma, an international human rights group lamented that he was not put on trial. “We regret that Idi Amin is dying without meeting justice for his crimes,” said Reed Brody, director of special prosecutions at Human Rights Watch, in a statement issued by the New York-based group.

“Amin was one of the bloodiest tyrants in a bloody century. It’s increasingly possible to prosecute dictators outside their home countries. Unfortunately, the trend didn’t catch up with Mr. Amin in time.”

Human Rights Watch said it had asked a Saudi diplomat in 1999 about the possibility of Amin’s extradition or prosecution, and was told that “according to Bedouin hospitality, once someone was welcomed as a guest in your tent, you did not turn him out.”

The Saudi Foreign Ministry had no comment to make on the issue yesterday.

Amin has been in a coma since he was admitted Friday to the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, where he has lived in exile for years. His condition was described as ‘stable’ by a hospital spokesman yesterday.

Amin’s sons, who have been at his bedside in the intensive care unit, have asked for privacy, saying they do not want any details released about their father’s condition.

Amin, believed to be 80, had reportedly been suffering from high blood pressure.

It is estimated that more than 200,000 Ugandans were tortured and murdered during Amin’s regime, which lasted from 1971 until 1979, when he was ousted by Ugandan exiles and the Tanzanian army.

Human rights groups say as many as 500,000 people were killed during Amin’s rule.

After his ouster, Amin, a Muslim and member of the small Kakwa tribe from northwestern Uganda, went into exile first in Libya, then Iraq (news - websites) before finally settling in Saudi Arabia on the condition that he stay out of politics.