{UAH} History of Uganda

Brian Barron a BBC correspondent covered the fall of Idi Amin in 1979, and later tracking down the dictator to a secret hideout in Saudi Arabia. This was Idi Amin's first interview since his deposition.

"The Idi Amin I knew" By Brian Barron

We were the first foreign correspondents to reach abandoned Kampala and, through crowds dancing in the street, we immediately went to the headquarters of his secret police, the State Research Bureau, SRB.

Below ground level the power had failed. We stumbled down the stairs of the empty building into a charnel house. The floor was awash with blood, the bodies of the SRB's last victims lying in the darkness in their concrete dungeons.

Upstairs, the electricity was working. In one vast room we found the SRB's abandoned wiretapping operation still functioning.

Neat rows of Akai tape recorders were patched into Kampala's phone grid - the spools rotating, pencils and pads on the desks for the note-takers who had fled.

Who knows how many phone calls the secret police thugs had intercepted over the years with fatal results?

In another room stuffed with files marked Top Secret, I found one detailing the surveillance of my BBC colleague Philip Short who had been expelled by Amin.

Then we headed for Amin's living quarters in Nile Mansions. The priority was to search the refrigerators because of persistent reports that he sometimes kept the heads of his victims in the freezer.

With relief, we found no evidence to back this up.

Within a few weeks, Idi Amin escaped from Uganda, probably with the help of Colonel Gaddafi.

Tracked down to Jeddah

A year later, in partnership with cameraman Mohammed Amin of Visnews in Nairobi, I mounted a search for the fugitive strongman.

Eventually we located him in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

The Saudis had been staunch allies because Idi was a Muslim convert who ordered mosques built across Uganda when he was in power.

After weeks of negotiation through an intermediary we fixed a meeting at his hideaway in Jeddah.

He stipulated the interview had to be done clandestinely without the knowledge of the Saudi authorities.

Homesick

We rang the bell and the front door was opened by several nervous Saudi government bodyguards.

They would not admit us. Then Idi appeared behind them and loudly told them: "These visitors are my guests. You all know I am living here at the invitation of the King. Do not interfere."

Looking stressed but cowed by the mention of the monarchy, the Saudi secret police retreated to the kitchen.

Amin beckoned us to the lounge reverberating to bagpipe music - he was playing a recording of the Edinburgh Tattoo at maximum volume.

After introducing us to two of his sons, both with Scottish clans as their Christian names, Amin gave me a 45 minute interview.

He was relaxed and clearly homesick, promising he would regain control in Uganda. He rejected any responsibility for the years of brutality, for the murder of his opponents, for the scenes of horror we had witnessed at the SRB headquarters.

All had been fabricated by his enemies, he insisted.

What he told us that evening in 1980 was a lie from beginning to end.

Idi Amin was the most flamboyant of a group of African dictators I covered during that turbulent period.

Emperor Bokassa, another army sergeant gone wrong, in Central Africa; the mad, bad General Siad Barre in Somalia; the psychopathic Sergeant Doe ruling Liberia.

Despite Amin's crimes against humanity, he escaped justice for one reason only: the Saudi authorities shielded one of the monsters of our time. Sent from Gook's iPhone

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