Idi Amin
President of Uganda (1971-1979) · Uganda · Politicians · Lived 1925 to 2003 · aged 78 · also Saudi Arabia
Idi Amin is read about 6,065 times a day, in 102 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 22 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 397 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?Uganda's third president ruled for eight years after seizing power in a 1971 coup, presiding over a regime that international observers estimate killed between 100,000 and 500,000 people through political repression and extrajudicial killings.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 12
Nakasero Hill in Kampala, the district where Amin was reportedly born according to his family
Amin (centre-left) as chief of staff during a visit of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol (centre) in 1966
Milton Obote, Uganda's second president, whom Amin overthrew in a coup d'état in 1971
Many victims of Amin's regime perished in torture chambers during his reign. One such chamber is pictured.
Refugees of Uganda's Asian Community in the Netherlands, November 1972
Amin during the inauguration of William Tolbert, 20th president of Liberia, in 1976In their own words 2
, Politics is like boxing - you try to knock out your opponents.
Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking. I never had any formal education - not even a nursery school certificate. But sometimes I know more than Ph.
Awards
In their orbit 5
About this person
Amin joined the British Colonial Army as a cook in 1946, rising to lieutenant through actions against Somali rebels and the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. After Uganda's 1962 independence he became army commander, then overthrew president Milton Obote in 1971 when he learned Obote planned to arrest him for misappropriating army funds. His presidency saw him shift from pro-Western backing to Soviet support, expel Uganda's Asian population in 1972, and briefly chair the Organisation of African Unity in 1975. His 1978 attempt to annex Tanzania's Kagera Region prompted an invasion that captured Kampala in 1979 and sent him into exile in Libya, Iraq, and finally Saudi Arabia, where he lived until 2003.
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