Idi Amin

Idi Amin was an army officer who took power in Uganda in a coup in 1971 and ruled as military dictator until a Tanzanian-led invasion drove him out in 1979. His eight years in power are remembered for mass killings, the expulsion of the country's Asian minority and economic collapse; human rights groups and other observers have estimated the number killed under his rule at between 100,000 and 500,000.

Accounts of Amin's early life conflict, as he left no memoir. British records gave his birth year as 1925 and he himself once implied 1926, while his family and his Saudi death certificate give 30 May 1928, in Kampala. His father was Kakwa and his mother Lugbara. Raised a Muslim, he was turned away from primary school and was educated mainly at a Quranic school in Bombo.

He joined the King's African Rifles, Britain's colonial regiment in East Africa, in 1946 as an assistant cook. He served in Kenya against Somali insurgents and then against the Mau Mau rising, rose to warrant officer, the highest rank then open to black African soldiers, and in 1961 became one of the first two Ugandans commissioned as officers. A powerful man, he was Uganda's light heavyweight boxing champion through the 1950s.

After independence in 1962 Amin rose rapidly under Prime Minister Milton Obote. In 1966, on Obote's orders, he led the army assault on the palace of the Kabaka of Buganda, in a crisis in which more than 1,000 people were reportedly killed, and he became army commander that year. Relations between the two men soured, and Amin learned that Obote meant to arrest him over missing army funds. On 25 January 1971, while Obote was abroad at a Commonwealth summit, Amin seized power, reportedly with help from Israeli agents. A week later he declared himself president, promising elections that never came.

Amin governed by decree and through military tribunals and security bodies such as the State Research Bureau, whose Kampala headquarters became a place of torture and execution. Soldiers from Obote's Acholi and Lango communities were massacred in their barracks, and killings continued throughout his rule. The International Commission of Jurists put the dead at no fewer than 80,000 and probably around 300,000, while exile groups working with Amnesty International estimated 500,000. Victims included the Anglican archbishop Janani Luwum, a former chief justice and two of his own ministers.

In August 1972 Amin declared an "economic war" and ordered the expulsion of Asians without Ugandan citizenship, about 60,000 people. Around 30,000 went to Britain. Their businesses were handed to his supporters, many soon failed, and the economy went into steep decline. In 1976 he was declared president for life.

At first backed by Britain and Israel, Amin turned to Muammar Gaddafi in 1972, expelled Israeli advisers and broke off relations with Israel; the Soviet Union became his main arms supplier. In 1975 he took the rotating chair of the Organisation of African Unity. In June 1976 he allowed hijackers of an Air France jet to land at Entebbe, where Israeli commandos freed nearly all the hostages; one elderly hostage left behind in a Kampala hospital was afterwards murdered. Britain broke off diplomatic relations the following year.

By 1978 the army was split by mutinies and his circle of supporters had shrunk. That November Ugandan troops crossed into Tanzania, and Amin proclaimed the annexation of part of the Kagera region; whether he ordered the invasion beforehand is disputed. Julius Nyerere responded with a counter-offensive in January 1979, joined by Ugandan exiles. Despite Libyan help, Kampala fell on 11 April 1979 and Amin fled. After a period in Libya he settled in Saudi Arabia, which gave him refuge on condition that he stayed out of politics. He never expressed remorse for his rule, and he died in Jeddah on 16 August 2003.

Our 1960 map shows Uganda as a British protectorate shortly before independence; the 1985 map shows the country after his fall.