Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada (circa 1925 – 2003) was a Ugandan military officer who seized power in a 1971 coup and ruled Uganda as dictator until 1979. His regime was known for repression, ethnic persecutions, human rights abuses, economic mismanagement, corruption, and nepotism. But what sets him apart from other brutal and incompetent kleptocrats, and earns him a place on this list, was his sheer bizarreness.
He was commander of the Ugandan army when he got wind that he was about to be arrested for theft, so he overthrew the government and declared himself president. His behavior was odd from the start and grew increasingly more erratic and unpredictable with time. He started off as a conservative and was initially supported by the West and Israel, only to end up an ardent supporter of Libya’s Qaddafi and the PLO. He ordered the expulsion of Uganda’s ethnically Asian citizens and residents, seized their and Europeans’ businesses and enterprises, which formed the economy’s backbone, and handed them to relatives and supporters who promptly drove them into the ground.
After the UK severed diplomatic relations, he declared that he had defeated Britain and awarded himself a CBE (“Conqueror of the British Empire”) medal, and also conferred upon himself a VC, or Victorious Cross, a copy of the British medal. Among the titles he bestowed upon himself were “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular“. He also declared himself King of Scotland.
His personal life was no less bizarre. A polygamist, he married at least 6 women, at least one of whom he murdered and dismembered. In 1975, a 19-year-old go-go dancer caught his eye, so he had her boyfriend beheaded and married her in a lavish wedding that cost about 10 million dollars, at a time when much of Uganda was hungry and malnutrition was widespread.
Estimates of his victims range from 100,000 to half a million. A boneheaded attempt to seize a province of neighboring Tanzania led to a war which Amin swiftly lost, and he was forced to flee in 1979, first to Libya, and then to Saudi Arabia, whose royal family gave him asylum, refused to honor requests for his extradition, and paid him generous subsidies until his death in 2003.