Idi Amin ....Africa's Brutal Islamist Dictator

The Last King of Scotland is being shown throught the world,
but what the movie seems to do is play down Amin's religious background.

Forest Whitaker is staring in the movie as the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin

The story is how a Scottish doctor became the personal physician to Ugandan President Idi Amin.



Idi Amin's conversion to Islam

Idi Amin was born as Idi Awo-Ongo Angoo in Kampala on May 17, 1928 to his father Andreas Nyabire (1889 – 1976) – an ethnic Kakwa and Catholic who converted to Islam in 1910 and changed his name to Amin Dada. Other sources say that Dada was not his father's name, but a nickname Amin acquired later.

Abandoned by his father, Idi Amin grew up with his maternal family. His mother, according to Guweddeko, was called Assa Aatte (1904 – 1970), an ethnic Lugbara and a traditional herbalist who among others treated members of Buganda royalty.

He joined an Islamic school in Bombo in 1941, where he excelled in reciting the Qur'an. After a few years he left the school, and did odd jobs before being recruited to the army by a British colonial army officer.

Idi Amin's connections to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)

Amin also had strong ties to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The Israeli embassy was offered to them as headquarters; and Flight 139, the Air France Airbus hijacked from Athens on June 27, 1976 was invited by Amin to stop at Entebbe International Airport in the city of Entebbe, 32 km from Kampala. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 PLO and Red Army Faction prisoners in return for the 256 hostages and were assisted by Amin's troops. Amin visited the hostages more than once.

At midnight on July 3, 1976, Israeli commandos attacked the airport and freed all but two of the hostages. (One was killed by the Israeli forces, while another, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who had been taken to a hospital before the rescue, was killed under Amin's direct orders by two army officers after the hostage rescue.) In the operation, Uganda's air force was badly crippled as its fighter jets were destroyed (see also Operation Entebbe).

The success of the Israeli operation largely contributed to his downfall, while increased resistance and sabotage operations crippled the nation during his final years. Partly on the basis of his "visions" and erratic behaviour, Idi Amin is often believed to have suffered from neurosyphilis: Deborah Hayden makes the case for this hypothesis in her Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis.

History of Idi Amin

Idi Amin (c. 1924–August 16, 2003) was an army officer and President of Uganda (1971–1979). His tenure witnessed much sectarian violence, including the persecution of the Lango, and other ethnic groups as well as Christians in Uganda.

The death toll during Amin's regime will never be accurately known. An estimate from the International Commission of Jurists is that it was not less than 80,000 and more likely around 300,000. Another estimate, compiled by exile organisations with the help of Amnesty Internationl, put the number killed at 500,000.

He gave himself the title "His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."


Little know facts about Idi Amin

1) He promised to hold elections within months . Shortly after taking power, however, Amin established the so-called "State Research Bureau," which were actually his own brand of death squads to hunt down and murder Obote's supporters as well as much of the intelligentsia, whom he distrusted.

Military leaders who had not supported the coup were executed, many by "beheading".

Obote took refuge in Tanzania, from where he attempted to regain the country through a military invasion in September, 1972, without success. Obote supporters within the Ugandan army, mainly from the Acholi and Lango tribes, were also involved in the invasion. Amin retaliated by bombing Tanzanian towns, and purging the army of Acholi and Lango officers. The ethnic violence grew to include the whole of the army, and then Ugandan civilians. As the violence increased, Amin became more and more paranoid, fearing a coup within his own government. The Nile Mansions Hotel in Kampala became infamous as Amin's interrogation and torture centre.


2)He had the the Christian Archbishop Janani Luwum slaughtered


3)He liked to refer to himself as "His Excellency Al-Hadji Field Marshal Dr. Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Life President of the Republic of Uganda"


4)When Idi Amin died the holy muslim nation of Saudi Arabia on August 16, 2003, aged 79, and was buried in Jeddah.

5)Given the slaughter and carnage this men left I wonder why Arab Saudi leaders would
protected him, after he killed so many people.


6)Amin was fond of racing cars (of which he owned several), boxing, and Disney cartoons. Many foreign journalists considered him a somewhat comical and eccentric figure; he was widely caricatured in the west as a murderous buffoon. There were also rumours that he was a cannibal, though this has never been proven.


7)He had his tunics specially lengthened so that he could wear many World War II medals, including the Military Cross and Victoria Cross. He granted himself a number of titles, including "King of Scotland". In 1977, after Britain broke diplomatic relations with his regime, Amin declared he had beaten the British and conferred on himself the decoration of CBE (Conqueror of the British Empire)


8) Henry Kyemba, Amin's Health Minister and a former official of the first Obote regime, had used travel for a World Health Organisation conference as a means of defecting after coming to fear for his own safety in Uganda. Resettled in Britain, Kyemba wrote and published A State of Blood, an account of Amin and his rule that destroyed any lingering comic or eccentric image still harboured about Amin.