Idi cheats justice for the last time

Idi Amin, the former Ugandan dictator who presided over the deaths of almost 500,000 people in his eight-year rule in the 1970s, died aged 80 yesterday in a Saudi hospital where he had been in a coma since mid-July.

'We can confirm that Mr Idi Amin has died from complications due to multiple organ failure,' said a senior source at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah.

A man who expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler - and who once declared himself King of Scotland - Amin was reviled for massacring tens of thousands of opponents and members of rival tribes during his 1971-79 rule.

Exiles accused him of having kept severed heads in the fridge, feeding corpses to crocodiles and having one of his wives dismembered.

He had also expelled in excess of 40,000 Ugandan Asians in 1972, and apparently colluded with the pro-Palestinian hijackers of a jet full of Jewish travellers that led the Israelis to launch a military raid against Entebbe to release them.

Yesterday the Ugandans reacted to his death with a mixture of relief at the demise of a tyrant, tinged with nostalgia for a leader who many Ugandans had applauded at the time for expelling the Asians who dominated much of the economy in 1972.

'I'm not happy, because Amin was for the local people. I have been praying that he would come back one day and become President again,' said Mary Kimeme, 80, a grandmother preparing beans and bananas in her kitchen in Kampala. 'I miss him.'

George Ngwa of Amnesty International said: 'Amin's death is a sad comment on the international community's inability to hold leaders accountable for gross human rights abuses. It was the international community's indifference - including that of the UK - that allowed Amin to escape justice.'

Although Amin's family had recently asked the Ugandan government to allow him to return home, President Yoweri Museveni had told them that Amin would face trial for his crimes if he returned to Uganda alive.

But the authorities have told the family that they may bring his body. 'Nobody will stand in the way of the family returning Amin's body to Uganda,' John Nagenda, Museveni's adviser on media relations, said yesterday.