Idi Amin was born in Buganda to parents who came from northwestern Uganda. He received little formal education and pursued a career in the army from a young age. Amin gained the attention and admiration of his superiors by becoming the heavyweight boxing champion of Uganda, a title he held from 1951 to 1960. Idi Amin was a sergeant in the British colonial army. After Uganda’s independence, Amin rose in the Ugandan armed forces to the position of Commander-in-Chief. In 1971, Amin seized control of the government and ruled Uganda for 8 years till 1979 when he was ousted by a combined force of Uganda exiles and Tanzania forces.
Amin will be remembered for reigning over a brutal regime undr which many Ugandans lost their lives in cold blood.
Idi Amin is also remembered for his outbursts and dimplomatic antics. In 1976, Amin offered safe haven to Palestinian hijackers, who had hijjacked a French Airliner enroute to Isreal.
Amin fled to Libya where he was offered asylum, but after an altercation between his security guards and the Libyan police, he was forced to leave at the end of 1979. He then accepted asylum in Saudi Arabia, settling in Jiddah. He made one known attempt to return to Uganda, in early 1989, getting as far as Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where he was identified and forced to return to Saudi Arabia.
Amin died in April 2003 in Saudi Arabia