Idi Amin

Idi Amin (c. 1925-2003) was a Ugandan military officer who seized power in a 1971 coup and ruled as president of Uganda until 1979. His regime became one of the most violently repressive in postcolonial African history: human rights organizations and later tribunals estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed during his rule, including political opponents, members of rival ethnic groups and religious leaders. In 1972 he ordered the mass expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority, who had long dominated much of the country's commerce, seizing their businesses and property. His increasingly erratic foreign conduct culminated in an attempted annexation of Tanzanian territory in 1978, which triggered the Uganda-Tanzania War; Tanzanian forces and Ugandan exiles overthrew him in 1979, and he fled into exile, dying in Saudi Arabia in 2003 without ever facing trial.