One of Africa's bloodiest despots Idi Amin, who was blamed for the murder of tens of thousands of his people in the 1970s, died today in a Saudi hospital where he had been critically ill for weeks.
Amin had lived in exile, chiefly in Saudi Arabia, since being ousted in 1979. He was in his late 70s.
"We can confirm that Mr Idi Amin has died from complications due to multiple organ failure," said a senior source at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had said that if Amin died abroad, his body could be taken home for burial.
Amin, who was in near-death condition for weeks, had received death threats by telephone, prompting the hospital management to post guards at his bed in the intensive care unit.
A man who expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, Amin was denounced inside and outside Africa for massacring tens of thousands of people - some estimates say more than 100,000 - under his despotic 1971-79 rule.
A former boxing champion, he came to power in a 1971 coup and his rule was characterised by eccentric behaviour and violent purges.
Amin was a ruthless dictator who, the International Commission of Jurists said in 1977, had violated every fundamental human right during a "reign of terror".
Exiles accused him of having kept severed heads in the fridge, feeding corpses to crocodiles and having one of his wives dismembered. Some said he practised cannibalism.
In 1972 he expelled some 40,000 Asians, saying God had told him to transform Uganda into "a black man's country".
He himself was driven from Uganda in 1979 by forces from neighbouring Tanzania and Ugandan exiles. Saudi Arabia gave him sanctuary in the name of Islamic charity.
A Muslim, Amin had lived quietly in exile in Jeddah on a government stipend with four wives.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Ugandan-Asian newspaper columnist whose family was among those Amin expelled, said the Saudis should have brought him to justice.
"I think it is a disgrace that Saudi Arabia gave him the kind of life they did and the excuse is he was a Muslim. They should have delivered him into the hands of international justice and they never did," she told Sky television.
"And for the families of all those victims, black African families, this is going to be something they'll never forgive."
Amin was born in 1925, according to most sources, to a peasant family of the small, predominantly Muslim Kakwa tribe at Arua, in Uganda's remote West Nile district.
A large and imposing figure who revelled in publicity, Amin's eccentric behaviour created the image of a buffoon given to erratic outbursts and bloodlust.
His whimsical and savage rule shocked and revolted the world. He declared himself King of Scotland, banned hippies and mini-skirts, and appeared at a royal Saudi Arabian funeral in 1975 wearing a kilt.
In a rare interview in 1999, Amin told a Ugandan newspaper he liked to play the accordion and recite from the Koran. He said most of his food, including fresh cassava and millet flour, still came from Uganda.
He was sometimes spotted on evening walks along the coast or attending Friday prayers in a nearby mosque.