A Crazy Despot-Idi Amin

 A Crazy Despot - Idi Amin (Part-3)

Brutality of Idi Amin

A Debauchee:

   Idi Amin has been a debauchee too. His harem was full of women during his Presidency and he sired hundreds of children purposefully. He thought of living behind him a whole tribe known by his name.

   Officially Idi Amin had only four wives. The first, Sarah, known as “Mama Maliam”, was married to him in 1958. The second, Kay, was the daughter of a Protestant priest. The third was Norah and the fourth Medina. He would keep all his children with him in the presidential palace. He misused the Muslim law on divorce on March 26, 1974, when all of a sudden in a public function he divorced his first three wives- Maliam, kay and Norah, by repeating the word “talaq” three times. Idi Amin was so engrossed with his fourth wife, Medina, that he neglected the other three who established illegal relationship with other men. Kay was so full of venom that in order to take revenge upon her husband, she became pregnant by her lover. Idi Amin was so incensed that he put them behind bars and killed their lovers. Maliam and kay escaped and fled from Uganda and Norah was murdered by him. She was dismembered and her breasts were spitted from her body while alive. Then he got her corpse stitched, covered it by a sheet up to neck called her children and told them that their mother was a whore.

The Mysterious Murderer-Jack the Ripper

 The Mysterious Murderer-Jack the Ripper (Part 3)

Mary Kelly

   Jack the Ripper’s last and sixth victim was a 35 years old prostitute, Mary Kelly. Quite a large crowd had assembled at No. 13, Miller’s Court in East London, when Inspector Beck and Detective Walter Drew arrived to investigate. They felt that they had come to slaughter house. It looked as if her body had been cut up as a demonstration of the art of dissection. Pieces of flesh were hanging from picture nails on the walls. She had been disemboweled. Her heart and kidney were placed on a table beside her severed breasts. Her face had been thoroughly mutilated and the nose and ears sliced off. Her throat had been slit open. Inspector Beck wrote afterwards, “ What I saw when I pushed back an old coat and peeped through a broken pane of glass into the sordid little room which Mary Kelly called her home, was too harrowing to be described. It remains with me–and always will remain-as the most gruesome memory of the whole of my police career.” The police deduced that Jack the Ripper must have spent at least two hours in cutting Mary Kelly. It took a team of surgeons six hours to sew the body together.

Idi Amin-A Crazy Despot

    Idi Amin - A Crazy Despot (Part-2)

Idi Amin

Ghastly Murders:

   Simultaneously with the coup, an era of ghastly murders began in Uganda. The first on the list was the Chief of the Army staff, Brig Hussein. He was captured by the troops loyal to Idi Amin and taken to a maximum security Prison where he was clubbed with rifle butts and kicked in the presence of horrified jail warders. The dying officer was then loaded on to an armored military vehicle, driven out the prison and beating with rifle butts was resumed.

   Brig Hussein succumbed to the ghastly treatment meted out to him. His body was decapitated. His head was put on Idi Amin’s table, where he harangued it. Then it was kept in a fridge overnight.

   Idi Amin ordered some of the men he suspected of disloyalty to be thrown behind the bars at Makindye prison. At dusk, a group of army officers would enter the barrack where these people were kept and started beating them mercilessly. Their bellies were gashed with curved knives, and before dawn their corpses were loaded on a military carrier and dumped at various sites. The next morning the prisoners in the adjoining cell were ordered to clean the floor of the barrack with scrubbing brushes and water.  According to an eye-witness “the blood on the floor was a quarter of an inch thick. There were pieces of skill, teeth, brain tissue and dozens of empty shell cases.”

Jack the Ripper- The Mysterious Murderer

Jack the Ripper-The Mysterious Murderer (Part-2)

Newspaper headline about Jack the Ripper

   The third victim was 47 years old Annie Chapman, known to her friends as “Dark Annie”. There was a gap only eight days between the second and third murder. It was 7th September and Annie badly needed four pence to hire a bed for the night. She was seen staggering near 29, Hanbury Street around two in the night. Her body was discovered at dawn as passing people shouted “murder, murder”. Her entrails were hanging at the door of a woman who sold cat’s meat. The murder had been carried out in the usual brutal and vicious manner. Some coins and two brass rings were lying at her feet. The stomach had been opened and the intestines had been lifted from the body and placed on the shoulder of the corpse. Her neck had been nearly severed. The knife used must have been at least five inches long and the Coroner declared, “An unskilled person could not have done this, only someone used to the post-mortem room.” Through a handkerchief was tied to the neck, the blood must have flown freely. This led the Times to wonder as to how the murdered could get away from the scene undetected. It wrote, ”reeking with blood, and yet,.......he must have walked in broad daylight along streets comparatively well frequented, even at that early hour, without his startling appearance attracting attention.” The newspaper thought that the killer must be living in that area and must have gone to his house to remove all traces of his hideous crime. Other journals including Punch vehemently criticized the police and their inability to arrest the murdered. George Bernard Shaw, the eminent write, wrote an angry letter to Star.

   It was certain that the killer was an audacious person. In between the murders, he wrote sarcastic letters to the police ridiculing their inefficiency and working methods. He even threw a challenge to them to catch him if they could. He informed that he was going to kill someone in the near future. The police could neither arrest him nor had any idea regarding his identity. The papers were giving wide publicity to these murders by Jack the Ripper. They also vehemently criticized the tardy manner in which the police was dealing with these gruesome murders. The police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, would not even send his policemen to the site of murder. He would send his police dogs. His Deputy, Sir Robert Anderson, displayed his indifference to these murders by going out to Switzerland for a month’s holiday.

Idi Amin-the Hitler of Uganda

  Idi Amin - The Hitler of Uganda (Part-1)

Idi Amin

   The diabolic deeds created by Idi Amin are legion. But what give a particularly inhuman edge to these acts are the elements of sexual willfulness that was a part of it. Suffering from a venereal disease himself, Idi Amin reveled in perpetrating sexual torture on his opponents. He was a cannibal and openly announced his preference for salted human flesh. His former Health Minister vouchsafed that he would often visit hospital morgues to taste the human body and flesh. Could Satan be more evil than Idi Amin?

   Idi Amin was born in 1928 at Koboko, the smallest country in Uganda’s West Nile district. He was better known as “the Hitler of Uganda”. Idi Amin’s father was a marginal farmer, his parents separated at his birth and he had a distraught childhood. His mother was what use to be described as a camp follower. After some time, she started living with a man about her age. In 1954, she moved into Jinja barracks to live with Corporal Yasin, a clerk in King’s African Rifles. Corporal Yasin was in his early twenties and about half her age. She practiced witchcraft and Yasin got tired of her and turned her out. A few days later, Yasin reported sick and before he could be medically examined, he died.

   Idi Amin first served as a laborer at the sugar plantations owned by the Mehtas, the millionaire industrialist from Gujarat in India, who were the first Asian to be expropriated and thrown out of Uganda when Idi Amin assumed power.

   Idi Amin joined the King’s African Rifles in 1946 as an assistant cook. He was six feet four inches in height and one quintal (One hundred kg) in weight.  He became Ugandan heavyweight boxing champion and held the title for nine years. His officers found him obedient, though a bit short in grey matter.

Jack the Ripper-The Mysterious Murderer

  The Mysterious Murderer - Jack the Ripper (Part 1)

Jack the Ripper

   The mystery that could never be solved. Who was this mysterious murderer, who not only killed but carved the bodies of his victims like an expert surgeon? There were many theories regarding his identity and motive, but the truth could never be found out. For three months this devilish killer created terror in the East End area of London. Only the poor, famished and economically weak people lived in this section of London. Living a life that could only be described as living hell, the knife of Jack the Ripper added terror and misery to it. All his victims were prostitutes who roamed the streets at night selling their bodies for a small amount of money. He was brave enough to write mocking letters to the police daring them to arrest him. Once, he sent the kidney of his victim in a parcel, claiming that he had fried and eaten the other one. And then, the murders stopped as suddenly as they began.

   It was called the Bank Holiday Monday. It was on this day on August 6, 1888, that a mysterious murderer made his debut in the East End area of London. Soon, it came to be known as “Black Monday”, as Jack the Ripper committed his first murder on that day. It was not that murder was something uncommon in the area. But, the brutal and horrendous manner in which it was carried out sent shock waves throughout London. From then on for three months, London’s East End lived under the terror of this devilish killer who selected only prostitutes as his victims. It was in this hellish atmosphere that Jack the Ripper knifed six prostitutes to death for no apparent reason.

Target Manchuria

John T. Downey

  Target Manchuria

   The working methods of Chinese intelligence agencies generally remain in the dark. Very little is heard about them. There have been only two cases that throw some light on their modus operandi and efficiency. One of them is the unsuccessful operation known as “Target Manchuria”. It demonstrated to the world that the Chinese also do not lag behind in counter intelligence operations.

   John T. Downey, who worked as a trainer of agents in CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) could hardly imagine that he would find himself in a soup in his very first mission. But, fate decreed that he had to spend the next twenty years in a prison. Actually, it was not his job to go to Manchurian. His job was to train the Taiwanese against for dropping into China during the Korean War. But, he decided to go with them just for his experiences.

   He started from Seoul (South Korea) on November 29, 1952, with nine Taiwanese agents. They had to go to the Manchurian. These agents had to be dropped there and sum other agents working in another part of China had to be picked up. John T. Downey was accompanied by another CIA man, Richard Fecteau.

Bodies that Do not Decay

      Bodies that Do not Decay - Part 2

The Mummies of the Capuchin monks

   The mummies of the Capuchin monks are a good example of the bodies that do not decay. Furthermore, the sites of burial are at times chosen in such a way that decomposition is delayed. The case of the Capuchin monks hanging like broken dolls in the catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, is well known. The bodies of the monks have not decayed although they were left exposed to the air. It was discovered that the air in these catacombs has the peculiar property of drying out the bodies and turning them into natural mummies.

   A 19th century traveler wrote about these mummies, “They are all dressed in the clothes they usually wore......the skin and muscles become as dry and hard as a piece of stockfish and through many of them have been here upward of two hundred and fifty years, yet none are reduced to skeletons.”

Mata Hari - The World Famous Sex Spy

    Mata Hari, the most famous Woman and Sex Spy in History - Part 2

Mata Hari

   Mata Hari had spread a romantic story regarding herself. She said that she had been born in Malabar in South India, her mother was a dancer and that she had died during her birth. Mata Hari had also published that her name in childhood was Mata Hari and that she had been brought up in a Siva Temple. If we consider these words, her name appears to be quite significant as Mata Hari in India Language means a “Killer of one’s mother”.

   The popularity of Mata Hari, the black-haired beauty, began to touch the heights of fame. Just before the outbreak of the War, Mata Hari received espionage training in a school in Lorchi. In 1912 when the First World War broke out, Mata Hari was seen driving on the streets of Germany in the company of Berlin’s Police Chief. But at that time she was the citizen of a neutral country and her estate was in France. Mata Hari returned to Franc in 1913 in spite of the War. She gave up dancing and established herself as a fashionable personality.

Bodies that don’t Decay

         Bodies that don't Decay - Part 1

   Everybody must know about the mummies of the ancient Egyptian emperors, which were found inside the Pyramids in Egypt. But the strange thing is that, how is it that some people preserve dead bodies for years and years together? Not long ago a woman in India preserved the dead body of her husband for twelve long years. She not only preserved the body, but she bathed it daily and even slept in the same room. The case was too strange. It shook the loving sensibilities of the people. The press reported exhaustively on it and the woman was sent for a medical check-up.

Mummy of Muhammad Marwe

   This is not the only case in the world. There are many others. What then is the reason for preserving a dead body and how do people do it? A little girl named Nadja Mattei died in 1965 in Rome, Italy. She was just two years old at the time of her death. Her mother put the body into a coffin. But for twelve years she continuously dreamt that her daughter was begging to be taken out of the coffin. So the devoted mother tried to convince the authorities to let her open the coffin. But all her efforts were unsuccessful till 1977, when finally the exhumation of Baby Nadja Mattei was granted. Then to every one’s surprise, the body was found to be completely free from rotting. 

   A similar incident occurred at Kano, North of Nigeria. An unorthodox Muslim religious group was led by a self-styled prophet, Muhammad Marwa. He had established himself in 1960s and had a enormous number of followers. But seemingly everything was not as peaceful as it should have been. The orthodox Muslims were against him. Finally the brewing tension exploded in December 1980. A violent riot took place in which as many as eight thousand people were killed. This heretical or unorthodox Muslim leader was also killed in that riot.