Biography of Idi Amin

Nobody seems to know definitively when Idi Amin Dada was born – though most sources put it in the mid-1920s.

Having risen through the ranks of the army to become its commander, Idi Amin overthrew Uganda’s President Obote to seize power in 1971. Forced from power by Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles, he fled Uganda in 1979, initially to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia where he died on 18 July 2003.

Idi Amin presided over one of the bloodiest dictatorships in African history. Around 400,000 people are believed to have been killed under his rule. Many more were imprisoned and tortured.

He declared himself King of Scotland and appeared at a royal Saudi Arabian funeral in 1975 wearing a kilt. Idi Amin named four of his 43+ children Campbell, McLaren, McKenzie and Mackintosh.

Idi Amin also referred to himself as the “Conquerer of the British Empire”, using the letters CBE after his name, and awarded himself the Victoria Cross and the Military Cross. He once proposed marriage to Princess Anne.

Initially his regime was welcomed by Britain. And, according to his obituary in The Scotsman: “Amin made state visits to Britain in 1971 and 1972, during which he enjoyed a ceremonial trip to Edinburgh and dinner in London with the Queen (on the silver anniversary of the Queen’s coronation, Amin asked her to send him her “25-year-old knickers” to mark the celebrations).”

On 4 July 1976, in an amazing operation, dubbed “The Raid on Entebbe”, Israeli commandos rescued around 100 hostages that had been captured when Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France plane on a flight from Tel Aviv. The hostages had been held at Uganda’s Entebbe airport with Amin’s co-operation.