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The Obscenely Easy Exile of Idi Amin
August 19, 2003
By ETHAN BRONNER
On a reporting trip to Saudi Arabia seven years ago, I went
to Idi Amin's house. I had heard that Mr. Amin, the former
Ugandan dictator who died last weekend at the age of 78,
was living in Jidda, the Red Sea port, and I wanted to see
for myself. Was it possible that a man who, in the 1970's,
had ordered the deaths of 300,000 of his countrymen, raped
and robbed his nation into endless misery and admitted to
having eaten human flesh was whiling away his time as a
guest of the Saudi government?
It was. There, in a spacious villa behind a white gate, Mr.
Amin made his home with a half-dozen of his 30 or so
children. He was not there the day I rang (a son said he
was out of town), but locals said he could often be seen
pushing his cart along the frozen food section of the
supermarket, being massaged at the health club, praying at
the mosque. He had long ago abandoned his British-style
military uniform for the white robe of the Saudi man, but
as an African measuring 6-foot-3 and nearly 300 pounds, he
did not exactly blend in.
A former Sudanese colonel who worked as a manager at the
local supermarket said, "People greet him and say, `Hello,
Mr. President.' "
Why? Wasn't he a savage dictator?
"Oh yes - he used to eat people," the manager replied,
laughing. "But this is our nature. We forget."
But what would prompt the Saudi government to play host to
such a man? The answer, when the question was posed to
Saudi officials, was an excursion into the desert habits of
hospitality, and Mr. Amin's conversion to Islam. His
support for the Arab boycott of Israel in the 1970's
certainly also endeared him to his hosts.
During the nearly quarter-century of his soft exile, no
nation tried to bring Mr. Amin to justice. A few years ago,
after Spain's government went after Chile's former
dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Human Rights Watch did bring up
Mr. Amin's case to the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights, but to no avail. Under international law, any
nation, including Saudi Arabia, could have and should have
prosecuted Mr. Amin.
But, as Reed Brody, special counsel for prosecutions at
Human Rights Watch, says, "If you kill one person, you go
to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the
insane; if you kill 20,000, you get political asylum." Mr.
Brody keeps a melancholy map on his wall of other tyrants
gone free: Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay, lives
in Brazil; Haiti's Rao�l Cedras is in Panama; Mengistu
Haile Mariam of Ethiopia is in Zimbabwe; Hiss�ne Habr� of
Chad lives in Senegal.
Today there is the International Criminal Court, which can
bring a future Amin to justice, although the United States
is among 100 countries that have shortsightedly declined to
participate in the court.
I was sorry not to have had a chance to talk to Mr. Amin
directly. But those who did speak with him suggest that I
missed little. An Italian journalist, Riccardo Orizio,
asked him in 1999 whether he felt remorse. No, Mr. Amin
replied, only nostalgia. Six years earlier, a British
writer, Tom Stacey, saw him. At one point, Mr. Amin pulled
from his pocket a paraphrase of Psalm 22 and commented:
"Remember we are special to God. He sees a beauty in us few
see."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/opinion/19TUE4.html?ex=1062320239&ei=1&en=f7817620f6616209
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