www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/08/16/saudi.amin/index.html
Story Tools RELATED 26 Ugandan dictator Idi Amin dies 27 Idi Amin: 'Butcher of Uganda' 28 Amin death turns focus on tyrants IDI AMIN Born in Koboko, West Nile Province, Uganda, 1925 Raised by his single mother President of Uganda, 1971-79 Took office in 1971 military coup Ousted in 1979 military coup (CNN) -- Former Ugandan military ruler Idi Amin, blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the 1970s, has died in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, according to medical officials. Ugandan officials say Amin was 80, though his birth year is also listed as 1925. Amin, who had lived for years in exile in the port city of Jeddah, had been on life support since July 18, after slipping into a coma. A family member said Amin was to be buried Saturday afternoon in Saudi Arabia, Ugandan journalist Odoobo Bichachi told CNN. Uganda's ambassador to the United States, Edith Ssempala, said she believed the burial had taken place. But according to his relatives, the Ugandan government said he would face arrest. Amin was overweight and had suffered from hypertension and fatigue in recent years, said David Kibirige, a senior reporter for the Ugandan newspaper The Monitor. EDT at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, The Associated Press quoted one unnamed official as saying. A onetime heavyweight boxing champ and soldier in the British colonial army, Amin seized power in a military coup January 25, 1971, overthrowing President Milton Obote while he was abroad. He ordered the persecution of several Ugandan tribal groups and kicked all Asians out of the country in 1972, an action blamed for the collapse of the country's economy. The dictator was personally involved in the 1976 Palestinian hijacking of a French airliner to Entebbe. Exiles said he kept severed heads in his refrigerator, fed corpses to crocodiles and had one of his wives dismembered. Rose, fell through military coups start quote "Ugandans and the Uganda government are kind of relieved. He fled to Libya, then Iraq and finally Saudi Arabia, where he was allowed to settle provided that he stay out of politics. A convert to Islam, Amin had spent the past decade living with his four wives in Saudi Arabia. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Ugandan-Asian newspaper columnist whose family was among those Amin expelled, said the Saudis should have brought him to justice. They should have delivered him into the hands of international justice, and they never did," she told Sky News television. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Story Tools 31 Click Here to try 4 Free Trial Issues of Time!
|
http://csua.com/feed/