Idi Amin fights for life in Saudi hospital

Exiled tyrant Idi Amin, whose eight-year presidency of Uganda is remembered for the torture and killing of more than 200,000 people, was in a coma in a Saudi hospital today.

Amin, believed to be 80, was in a critical condition and on a respirator at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, staff members said. He was admitted to the hospital on Friday.

A hospital official told The Associated Press that the former Ugandan leader’s condition had stabilised.

Amin, in exile in Saudi Arabia, had been suffering from high blood pressure, medical staff said.

Amin has been in a coma since his admission to the hospital and was in the intensive care unit. Three of his sons were by their father’s bedside yesterday.

In Uganda, the independent Sunday Monitor reported that Amin, who seized power in 1971 and was ousted in 1979, had been undergoing treatment for the past three months for hypertension and “general fatigue”.

The newspaper quoted Nalongo Madina Amin – “Amin’s favourite wife” – as saying she had approached Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni some time ago and asked that her husband be allowed to return to the east African nation to die, but was told the former dictator would have to “answer for his sins”.

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where Museveni was attending a meeting on Burundi, his press assistant, Oonapito Ekonioloit, said Amin, who once described himself as “a pure son of Africa”, was in Saudi Arabia on his own accord and that his relatives “are free to bring him back to Uganda”.

“Everyone knows he has a past. If he has any case to answer, it will be dealt with according to the law,” Ekonioloit said. “He’s a free citizen. It’s a private matter between Amin and his family whether they want to bring him back alive or dead.”

Amin, who served in the British colonial King’s African Rifles and saw action during the Second World War in Burma, was a well-regarded officer at the time of Uganda’s independence from Britain in 1962. He rose to chief of staff of Uganda’s army and air force in 1966.

He fell out with Ugandan leader Milton Obote and ousted him on January 25, 1971, when Obote was attending an African summit.

Amin was hailed a hero and the 17 stone-plus leader was nicknamed Dada, or “Big Daddy”. He was even was chosen as the head of the Organisation of African Unity in 1975 despite some members’ objections.

Ugandans initially welcomed Amin, but his popularity plummeted after the East African nation descended into economic chaos and he declared himself president for life.

Amin grew increasingly authoritarian, violent and subject to mood swings. It is estimated that more than 200,000 Ugandans were tortured and murdered during his regime, which ended on April 11, 1979, when he was ousted by a combined force of Ugandan exiles – including Museveni – and the Tanzanian army.

Human rights groups say as many as 500,000 people were killed during Amin’s rule. Bodies were dumped into the Nile River after it became impossible to dig graves fast enough.

At one point, so many bodies were fed to crocodiles that the remains occasionally clogged intake ducts at Uganda’s main hydroelectric plant at Jinja.

Amin, a Muslim and member of the small Kakwa tribe from north-western Uganda, went into exile first in Libya, then Iraq before finally settling in Saudi Arabia on the condition that he stay out of politics.