Rehabilitating Idi Amin

last updated 8 January 2015

Kampala, Uganda

One of the sons of Idi Amin has launched a campaign to improve the image of the late Ugandan dictator. Jaffar Amin, 40, said he was speaking out now because the film The Last King of Scotland, which depicts some of Amin’s sadistic atrocities, recently opened in Uganda. “Dad is the only person that has ever been accused and sentenced, incarcerated by opinion, without it ever reaching any courthouse,” Amin said. The family doesn’t deny that people were killed during the dictator’s reign, but it does dispute the numbers, as well as the widespread belief that Idi Amin was a psychopathic maniac. Amin said Oscar winner Forest Whitaker actually got most of his father’s mannerisms right, but botched his stride. “Whitaker is knock–kneed,” Amin said. “My father was bowlegged.”