Ali Fadhul was Idi Amin’s trusted lieutenant – and would kill on command

In the mad days of Idi Amin’s Uganda in the 1970s, no one was safe, unless they were bootlicking lackeys willing to kill for the boss.

Ali Fadhul, a former senior Uganda Army brigadier, and associate of the murderous tyrant Idi Amin.

OBITUARY

Ali Fadhul, soldier, government minister, murderer. Born: Eastern Uganda, circa 1940; died, aged 81, in Kampala, Uganda, November 2

Uganda is wrestling with its brutal past but never seems able to shake it off. And that is no surprise when its recent history includes eight years of tyranny under the “president-for-life” Idi Amin.

Amin casually killed his many enemies: people from other tribes, probably his fourth wife Kay, sometimes even his ministers.

When the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda wrote to Amin with concern about summary execution and “disappearances” of Amin’s enemies, Amin had him ­arrested, shot in the mouth, then in the chest and his body thrown by a roadway.

To understand the almost unimaginable horror of those years, you need only read Amin’s response when asked if it was true that he sometimes ate his enemies: ‘’I don’t like human flesh. It’s too salty for me.’’

It is estimated that he killed 300,000 of his countrymen – many of whom were tortured in ways that cannot be published – at various murder factories around Kampala from which very few, if any, returned.

Gross human rights violations continue under today’s president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, who has changed the rules so he really can be president for life having clocked up almost 36 years so far.

But no tyrant acts alone. They need henchmen. Hitler had them, Mussolini too. Kim Jong-un has them – those fellows with frozen smiles in the background of every picture furiously taking notes of their nutty ­Supreme Leader’s every utterance.

Perhaps Amin’s most faithful servant was Ali Fadhul. He was born to the Busoga people near the border with Kenya and at 13 was seconded into the British-organised Kings African Rifles. He transferred to the Uganda Army when his country won its independence in 1962. It became a republic the following year. The preparations for independence were scrappy, with the kingdom of Buganda overly influential in pre-independence days, later losing its grip on power and the cleverly manipulative Milton Obote exploiting this to form an affiliation that saw him become executive prime minister.

In Obote’s early years, another former KAR soldier rose rapidly through the ranks of the Uganda Army: powerfully built former heavyweight boxing champion Idi Amin. At first, Obote and Amin got on well and Amin was made commander of the Uganda Army. After a falling out, Obote demoted Amin who, in January 1971, staged a coup and took over.

Fadhul was a co-conspirator and subsequently also rose rapidly through the army’s ranks as Amin’s trusted ally.

Within weeks, he became a lieutenant colonel and reportedly the architect of several massacres in July 1971 to purge the army of Obote’s fellow tribesmen. They were beaten to death in their barracks or herded south and murdered near the Tanzanian border.

A visiting American journalist travelling with a fellow American who lectured at a Kampala university went to investigate the massacres. They were arrested by Fadhul’s men and never seen again. A soldier later reported they had been killed and their bodies burned, their car pushed into a ravine.

Christians were top of the execution list as Amin sought to Islamise the country that then had relatively few Muslims. By now Fadhul was a regional governor. It was in this role that he abducted and had killed a regional administrative secretary, Francis Xavier Tibayungwa, in 1972 – a crime that would come back to haunt him. ­Although, one assumes, Fadhul was haunted by so many.

It wasn’t until 1987 that Fadhul was charged with Tibayungwa’s killing. He was convicted and sentenced to death. He delayed the hangman with multiple appeals and eventually was pardoned by Museveni in 2009 after 22 years on death row.

It is reported that he had 10 wives and 40 children. (Amin married six women and may have had up to 60 children.)

By the time he left jail, Fadhul was seriously ill and barely ambulatory. Predictably, his family defended him and his legacy. His son Aziz said: “My father served his country diligently; that is why many people respect him.”

Meanwhile, Uganda almost muddles through. A few of Amin’s torture chambers are even tourist attractions.

A few years ago, Stephen Asiimwe, until recently boss of the Uganda Tourist Board, was interviewed by Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall (whose murder shortly after by eccentric Danish inventor and private submarine builder Peter Madsen would make international headlines) and flirted with the idea that Amin’s horrors could be further exploited to promote tourism: “Idi Amin is the most popular Ugandan ever, but no one is making use of him.”