Idi Amin Faces Charges
New Vision (Kampala)
March 4, 2000
By Charles Wendo & Agencies
Kampala - Former Uganda dictator Idi Amin is likely to face legal pursuit like Chile's Augusto
Pinochet, human rights groups have said.
While disappointed that Pinochet had escaped trial on torture charges, human rights campaigners
said on Thursday that the affair had "made the world a smaller place" for human rights abusers.
Amin, currently in Saudi Arabia, is listed with Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Marium and Hissene
Habre of Chad among the surviving former dictators now living in exile. Having massacred hundreds
of thousand of Ugandans and expelled over 50,000 Ugandans of Asian origin, Amin is the best
known of the surviving African dictators.
Habre, who ruled bloodily between 1982 - 1990, was last month placed under house arrest in
Senegal after Chadian exiles there sued him in a case inspired by Pinochet case.
If the trial goes on, he would be the first former African leader to be prosecuted in another
African state for crimes against humanity. He has been dubbed the "African Pinochet."
"The fact that four countries have sought Pinochet's extradition and that his claim of immunity
has been rejected, has made the world a smaller place for people who commit atrocities," said
Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch in London.
An Amnesty International spokesman said, "The precedent established by the case will remain
the most important since the Nuremberg trials (of Nazis after World War II)." The human rights
watchdog issued a statement saying Pinochet's arrest - almost unthinkable just 17 months ago
- has sent a powerful message (that) no one is above international law."
Amnesty said the effects of the Pinochet case could already be seen in the indictment of Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic for atrocities and the arrest of Rwandan war crimes suspect Tharcisse
Muvunyi in Britain last month.
Pinochet, who ruled between 1973 - 1990, narrowly escaped extradition to Spain after 16 months
under house arrest in UK