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.”

   Idi Amin is a criminal. His methods of killing innocent people have been truly heinous. At his behest, 32 senior military officers were herded in one room around which explosives were packed and detonated, killing all of them. The loud noise of explosions was explained as detonation of damaged bombs.

The Brutality of Idi Amin's Army

   Idi Amin suspected a full battalion of disloyalty. The soldiers and officers were ordered to be ferried to Kartuma Falls where they were systematically bayoneted and their bodies thrown into the falls. Their relatives were killed like wise and woman raped by gangs of Amin’s soldiers. He thought it was an act of piety-feeding crocodiles on human bodies.

   Idi Amin’s sadism knew no bounds. Colonel Meseura Arach, Commander, first Infantry Bridgade, was tortured and beaten to death. His private organ was severed and pushed into his mouth at Idi Amin’s orders. In August 1972, he startled the world by ordering Asians inside Uganda to quit. Most of the Asians were rich businessmen and landlords. They were expropriated and treated brutally as they left the country they had served for about a century. Some were killed and others were harassed, manhandled, robbed and a few raped also.
 

   On September 21, Idi Amin’s troops were ordered to the Chief Justice of Uganda, Benedicato Kiwanuka. The troops burst into his chambers and dragged him away at gunpoint. He was taken to Idi Amin in whose presence his ears, nose, lips and arms were cut from his body, his private parts also were cut and pushed into his mouth. The Chief Justice writhed in agony for two hours before he died. His body was consigned to flames.

   The list of Idi Amin’s victims was endless and the total number of the Ugandans done to death by him stands at 200,000 according to most conservative estimates.  Many were pounded to death with sledgehammers and others bled to death, their stomachs slashed.
 

   The interior Minister of Uganda, Basil Bataringaya was being urged upon by Dr. Milton Obote to leave for Tanzania, but he did not do so as he could not leave his 96 years old father and nine children behind to be butchered by Idi Amin in his stead. Idi Amin finally ordered him finished. He was dismembered alive, decapitated and his head was put on display on the top of a pole. James Buwmbo, a brother of deposed President Dr. Milton Obote’s wife, was dragged from his car in Kampala’s main street and he was never seen again. Joseph Mubiru, Governor of the Bank of Uganda, was kept in a cold water tank till he lost consciousness. His head was chopped off and dressed to be placed at Idi Amin’s Table as a paper weight. Frank Kalimuzo, Vice-Chancellor of Makerere University, was taken away from his office and killed.

   Idi Amin adopted most brutal and unheard of techniques of killing people, cutting the victim’s flesh and forcing him to feed on it raw or roasted until he bled to death. He adopted most horrible and primitive methods of torture, too terrible to describe, sticking bayonets through the victim’s anus or genitals or woman raped and their reproductive organs set on fire while they were alive.

A Cannibal:

Idi Amin

   Idi Amin has been not only a brute murderer but also a cannibal. According to his former Health Minister, when the body of the erstwhile Chief of the Army Staff, Brig Charles Arube, was brought to the hospital morgue, Idi Amin entered the morgue alone and asked the Medical Superintendent to stay out and shut the door of the morgue tight. Idi Amin remained in the morgue for a few minutes. He took a knife from his pocket, dug it into Arube’s corpse, tasted his blood and swallowed piece of his flesh raw.

   Idi Amon was extremely fond of human flesh. Once he was telling a group of his officers about how monkey meat was served to him during his state visit to Zaire. When he saw that his men were horrified to hear that, he stunned them by telling that to say of monkey meat, he ate and relished human flesh too. It was a cruel irony of fate that except one of the men present there, all others were to be murdered by Idi Amin and their flesh was to be devoured raw by him later. Idi Amin was fond of human flesh and leopard meat, but he preferred the saltish taste of the human flesh more than the leopard meat.

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