Idi Amin Biography

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Idi Amin Dada Oumee was the president of Uganda from 1971 until 1979. He was a Ugandan military officer. He is regarded as one of the world's most cruel despots.

Idi Amin (Uganda Idi Amin) was born to a Kakwa father and a Lugbara mother in Koboko. He joined the British Colonial Army's King's African Rifles (KAR) as a cook in 1946. He advanced through the ranks to lieutenant, fighting alongside the British against Somali insurgents in the Shifta War and subsequently the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. Amin continued in the armed services after Uganda obtained independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, rising to the rank of major and being named commander of the Uganda Army in 1965. When he learned that Ugandan President Milton Obote was intending to arrest him for misappropriating army funds, he staged a coup and declared himself president in 1971.

Amin changed from being a pro-Western ruler with strong support from Israel to being backed by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, the Soviet Union, and East Germany throughout his time in office. Amin was elected leader of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1975, a Pan-Africanist organisation dedicated to promoting African unity. From 1977 to 1979, Uganda was a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. When the United Kingdom severed diplomatic ties with Uganda in 1977, Amin declared victory over the British and added "CBE" to his title, which stood for "Conqueror of the British Empire."

Idi Amin History: Rule of Uganda Butcher

As Amin's leadership continued until the late 1970s, there was growing anger over his persecution of specific ethnic groups and political dissidents, as well as Uganda's terrible international reputation as a result of Amin's support for terrorist hijackers in Operation Entebbe. In 1978, he attempted to seize Tanzania's Kagera Region, prompting Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere to send soldiers into Uganda, where they captured Kampala on April 11, 1979, and deposed Amin. Amin was forced into exile, first in Libya, then in Iraq, and eventually in Saudi Arabia, where he died on August 16, 2003.

Human rights abuses, such as political repression, ethnic persecution, and extrajudicial killings, as well as nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement, were common under Amin's administration. Between 100,000 and 500,000 people were slaughtered under his dictatorship, according to international observers and human rights organisations.

Childhood of Idi Amin

Amin did not write an autobiography or give his permission for a written account of his life to be published. There are some inconsistencies in the dates and locations of his birth. According to most biographical accounts, he was born in 1925 in either Koboko or Kampala. Other unsubstantiated accounts place Amin's birth year anywhere between 1923 and 1928. Hussein Amin, Amin's son, claims that his father was born in Kampala in 1928.

Amin (Uganda Idi Amin) was the son of Andreas Nyabire (1889–1976), according to Fred Guweddeko, a researcher at Makerere University. Nyabire, a Kakwa ethnic group member, converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism in 1910 and changed his name to Amin Dada. His firstborn son was named after him. Idi Amin grew up in a rural farming town in north-western Uganda with his mother's family after being abandoned by his father at a young age. Assa Aatte (1904–1970), an ethnic Lugbara and a traditional herbalist who treated members of Buganda nobility, among others, was Amin's mother, according to Guweddeko. Amin has also been reported as being of mixed Kakwa-Nubian ancestry by other publications.

In 1941, Idi Amin enrolled in an Islamic school in Bombo. He dropped out of school with barely a fourth-grade English education and worked odd jobs before being recruited into the army by a British colonial army officer after a few years.

International Relation of Idi Amin

Idi Amin was initially backed by Western nations such as Israel, West Germany, and, most notably, the United Kingdom. Obote's shift to the left in the late 1960s, which included his Common Man's Charter and the nationalisation of 80 British companies, alarmed the West, who feared he would endanger Western capitalist interests in Africa and turn Uganda into a Soviet ally. Prior to Uganda's independence, Amin had served with the King's African Rifles and had taken part in Britain's suppression of the Mau Mau uprising. The British referred to him as "intensely loyal to Britain." This made him an obvious candidate as Obote's successor. Although some allege that Amin was groomed for power as early as 1966, scheming by the British and other Western powers began in earnest in 1969, after Obote began his nationalisation programme.

India cut ties with Uganda after the expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972, the majority of whom were of Indian heritage. As part of his "economic war," Amin severed diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom and nationalised all British-owned enterprises the next year.

Relations with Israel deteriorated that year. Despite the fact that Israel had previously supplied Uganda with armaments, Amin fired Israeli military advisers in 1972 and turned to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and the Soviet Union for help. Amin became a vocal opponent of Israel. In exchange, Gaddafi provided financial assistance to Amin. Amin outlined his preparations for war against Israel, which included paratroopers, bombers, and suicide squadrons, in the 1974 French-produced documentary film General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait.

Amin's biggest weaponry supply became the Soviet Union. East Germany was a part of the General Service Unit and the State Research Bureau, two of the most known terror organisations. East Germany sought to conceal its cooperation with these services later, during the Ugandan invasion of Tanzania in 1979.

Ambassador Thomas Patrick Melady of the United States suggested that the United States withdraw its presence in Uganda in 1973. "Racist, erratic and unpredictable, brutal, inept, bellicose, irrational, ridiculous, and militaristic," Melady said of Amin's regime.

Amin allowed a hijacked Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris to land at Entebbe Airport in June 1976. The hijackers were two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO) and two members of the German Revolutionäre Zellen. Three additional hijackers were added to the group. 156 non-Jewish captives who did not have Israeli passports were freed and taken to safety shortly after, however, 83 Jews and Israeli citizens, as well as 20 others who refused to desert them (including the captain and crew of the hijacked Air France flight), remained held hostage. On the night of the 3–4 July 1976, a force of Israeli commandos flew in from Israel and seized control of Entebbe Airport, liberating nearly all of the hostages in the subsequent Israeli rescue operation, codenamed Operation Thunderbolt (popularly known as Operation Entebbe). During the operation, three hostages died and ten were injured; seven hijackers, roughly 45 Ugandan soldiers, and one Israeli soldier, Yoni Netanyahu (the unit's leader), were slain. Netanyahu was the older brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dora Bloch, 75, an elderly Jewish Englishwoman who had been transported to Mulago Hospital in Kampala prior to the rescue attempt, was later murdered in retaliation. The episode significantly strained Uganda's international relations, prompting the British High Commission in Uganda to close. Amin ordered the execution of hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda in punishment for Kenya's support in the raid.

Under Amin's leadership, Uganda embarked on a massive military buildup, which alarmed Kenya. At the port of Mombasa in early June 1975, Kenyan officials seized a big convoy of Soviet-made armaments en route to Uganda. Tensions between Uganda and Kenya reached a pinnacle in February 1976, when Idi Amin said that he would investigate whether sections of southern Sudan and western and central Kenya, up to 32 kilometres (20 miles) from Nairobi, were once part of colonial Uganda. Kenya's government retaliated with a firm pledge that it would not give up "a single inch of land." After the Kenyan army deployed troops and armoured personnel carriers along the Kenya–Uganda border, Amin backed down. Amin had tense relations with Rwanda, and he regularly threatened the country's economy by denying commercial trucks entry to Mombasa and threatening to bomb Kigali.

Idi Amin Death

Amin's fourth wife, Nalongo Madina, reported him in a coma and near death from kidney failure at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 19, 2003. She pleaded with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to let him stay in the country for the rest of his life. Amin will have to "account for his faults the moment he was brought back," Museveni said. Amin's family eventually opted to turn off his life support, and he died on August 16, 2003, at a hospital in Jeddah. He was laid to rest in a humble cemetery in Jeddah's Ruwais Cemetery, with no ceremony.

David Owen disclosed after Idi Amin death that he had recommended having Amin assassinated during his time as British Foreign Secretary (1977–79). "I'm not ashamed of thinking that, because his rule ranks alongside Pol Pot as one of the worst of all African regimes," he has maintained.

Family of Uganda President Idi Amin

Idi Amin was a polygamist who had at least six wives, three of whom he divorced. In 1966, he married Malyamu and Kay, his first and second wife. He married Nora in 1967, and then Nalongo Madina in 1972. He announced his divorce from Malyamu, Nora, and Kay on Radio Uganda on March 26, 1974. Malyamu was detained in April 1974 in Tororo, Kenya, on charges of attempting to smuggle a bolt of cloth into the country. Kay Amin died in 1974 under unknown circumstances, and her body was discovered mutilated. Nora escaped to Zaire in 1979, and her current location is unknown.

In July 1975, Amin married Sarah Kyolaba, a 19-year-old go-go dancer with the Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Regiment Band nicknamed "Suicide Sarah," for £2 million. The wedding took place in Kampala at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit, and Amin's best man was Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Sarah had a lover, Jesse Gitta, before meeting Amin; he vanished, and it is unclear if he was decapitated or jailed after fleeing to Kenya. The couple had four children and enjoyed rally racing with Sarah as a navigator in Amin's Citroen SM. Sarah worked as a hairdresser in Tottenham before passing away in 2015.

Amin (Uganda dictator) was living with his final nine children and one wife, Mama a Chumaru, the mother of his youngest four children, in 1993. Daughter Iman, his final known kid, was born in 1992. Amin reportedly married again a few months before his death in 2003, according to The Monitor.

Amin was the father of about 60 children. Taban Amin (born 1955), Idi Amin's eldest son, led the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF), a rebel group hostile to Yoweri Museveni's government, until 2003. Museveni was awarded his pardon in 2005, and he was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Internal Security Organisation in 2006. Haji Ali Amin, another of Amin's sons, ran for Chairman (i.e. mayor) of the Njeru Town Council in 2002 but lost. Jaffar Amin (born in 1967), one of his kids, spoke out in support of his father after seeing the award-winning film The Last King of Scotland in early 2007. Jaffar Amin revealed that he was working on a book to repair his father's image. Jaffar is Amin's eighth official child from seven official women.

Bob Astles, a Briton, was one of Amin's closest associates. Isaac Maliyamungu was an important ally as well as one of Amin's most dreaded officers.