On this day in 2003, the Ugandan government announced that former president Idi Amin would not be returned to the country after his family requested that he be flown home from Saudi Arabia, where he was critically ill in hospital.
Amin, who had lived in exile since being overthrown in 1979, had been admitted to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah after suffering kidney failure and slipping into a coma two days earlier.
Responding to growing speculation, then Minister for the Presidency Ali Kirunda Kivejinja said Amin was too ill to be airlifted, making any return to Uganda medically impossible. He added that the government was facilitating travel for Amin's immediate family, including his wife Madina Amin, to join him in Saudi Arabia on humanitarian grounds.
Asked whether Amin's body would be allowed back into Uganda if he died, Kivejinja declined to give a definitive answer, saying the government would address the issue if and when it arose while maintaining a humanitarian approach.
President Yoweri Museveni later said Amin would have had to answer for the abuses committed during his rule had he returned to Uganda alive. However, Museveni indicated that his remains could be repatriated if his family wished.
Idi Amin never recovered from the coma. He died in Jeddah on August 16, 2003, aged about 78. His family chose to bury him the same day at Ruwais Cemetery in Saudi Arabia, ending nearly 24 years of exile.
This remains one of the most significant episodes in Uganda's post-Amin history, as the government balanced humanitarian considerations with the legacy of a regime widely blamed for tens of thousands of deaths and widespread human rights abuses.
