Death squads at Amin’s call

Press, 28 July 1976, Page 16

Death squads at Amin’s call

David Martin, author of a biography of President Amin, discusses the four killer squads controlled by Uganda’s leader.

Strange as it may seem, this is a good time for Uganda’s President Idi Amin. He is exactly wher he most likes to be — on centre stage, orchestrating slaughter. No matter how bizarre or brutal the reason, Amm re lishgs being the object of international attention. The Israeli mid on Entebbe airport. the d; appearance and rertain death of Mrs Dora Bloch, and Uganda’s deteno--ating relations with Britain and Kenya have all conspired to once more put him in the spotlight. For years he has weathered international opprobrium. He has learned that no matter how much the international community, individual nations and the newspapers may criticise, they are impotent to curtail his excesses. In the last fortnight all sorts of theories have been voiced to explain his actions. The most far-fetched is that An ’.i no longer < .- trols his killers: that they are Moslem f itics in the pay of Libya. Thct is rather like suggesting that Hitler was not resp. ;ible for the enormity of what occur" d in the Nazi concentration camps. President Amin. to a greater or tester extent, per«onally controls Uganda's four main killer squads. These are the Publi' ' *?ty Unit, the Bureau of State Rer.-rch. th. Preside,.'al Bodyguard ar ’. the Military Police. He may not order every murder, but he is the instigator of t policy which allows the.? killings. Today the most feared group in Uganda is the euphonistically named

Safety Unit (P.S.U.). It was created by President Amin tn 1971 soon afer he came to power, allegedly to stamp out “Kondoism,” the Ugandan name for armed robbery. The P.S.U. has abou: 300 members with barrack' it Naguru on the easier- side of the capital, F-tnpala. Jithin these bm.acks t* o Uy cells, where 50 inmates can be held, serves as the prison. Former inmates estimate that only three of every 10 people admitted to Naguru survive. One told me th't recently during six weeks in Naguru he personally witnessed 22 murders. Several said that after a prisoner is shot another prisoner is ordered to smash the dead man’s head with a car axle until it is no longer recognisable. Then he is ordered to lie beside the victim in the blood and gore. Several people who hav» been released from Naguiu corroborate this account. They say that prisoners are frequently tortured and that occasionally President Amin visits the prison. The unit is headed oy a Nubian superintendent of police. Ali Towilli. who is the most feared man tn Uganda next to President Amin. The Ugandan lead-r was recently forced to dis-, miss Towilli as a result cf pressure from Army’ elements revolted by the killings. But Ugandan sources say that Towilli had been reinstated.

Immediately after the P.S.U. w'as up in 1971 under command it began selecti”e killings. Among its first, victims was Michael K: :a, ”rer' mt of the Industrial Court. He was found in his arned-out sports car with his hands and legs chained to steering-wheel Amin wanted Kagwa’s irl friend. The second imp-., .ant killer unit is the Bureau of State Research s. ’.5.?..) which hr’ its headquarters at Nakaero, n r " f door to : President’s lodge in the centre of Kampala. Nominally this is commanded by Colonel Francis Itabuka. But in reality the unit is headed by his brutal deputy, Major Farouk, another Nubian. 8.5. R., uni ie P.S.U., rarely kills people at its headquarters. It picks people up at their homes and businesses and kills them in the bush outside Kampala. Two of the bureau’s favourite killing grounds are at Namanve and Mabira, a few miles from Kampala off the Ginja road. One source, a senior army officer, told me that last year after the killings in the forest became common knowledge, a team of police and army officers was sent there by Amin. The source said he personally counted 500 bodies. Their findings were reported to Amin but he took no action to bring the killers to court or stop the killings. Unlike the other squads, the B.S.R. operates inside . and outside Uganda. It has [ agents in missions overseas, ’ including London. Exiles on ; the run have been hunted in . Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and in London by killer : squads from the bureau. I This unit was also set up in 1971 by Amin and is much larger than the P.S.U. One of the bureau's most recent victims was Teresa Nanzir, a mathematics lecturer at Kampala’s Makerere University and Warden of I Africa Hall at the Univer- , sitv. She was told by the B.S.R. to appear 'refer® » ecnmif--1 sion at inquiry and give evi-

dence that a missing Kenyan student. Miss Esther Chesire, was a woman of loose morals who spent many nights sleeping outside the hali. Teresa Nanziri refused, saying that it was untrue. State Research officers told her to go away and think about it. On June 22 she urns taken from her fiat at Africa Hall, sources in Nairobi say. The next day her decapitated body was seen beside the Ginja road. An amopsy showed that she was expecting twins. The Presidential bodyguaro comprises members of the P.S.U.. B.S.R. and military police, and have Palestinian advisers who are in charge of security when Amin travels. This unit only kills occasionally when Amin wants somebody disposed of immediately and cannot contact the commanders or deputies of the P.S.U. and B.S.R. The bulk of the killings from Amin’s January 1971 coup d’etat and for the next two years were carried out bv the military police At least half the 9000 members of the Army, almost entirely from the Acholi, Iteso and Langi tribes, were slaughtered: 555 died in the notorious Mutukula prison massacre. Between th? coup and 1975 the military police were responsible for the deaths of many civilians. But today reliable Ugandan sources say the military police have been reshuffled and now they only kill within thf- Army. The common denominator between Amin and his killers is that they are either from his own West Nile Kakwa tribe, which numbers only 60,000, or are Nubians and southern Sudanese. They have little education and despise educated people and institutions of learning. Beyond that their fates are bound together. Whi’e the bulk of the Army is revolted by the killings, which some Ugandans believe could now have reached more than 200,000 the Kakwa and the Nubians effectively control the kevs to the armouries and weapons which would be needed to stage a successful coup or suppress an attempted one. O F.N.S., Copyright.