Idi Amin joined the newly independent Ugandan army in 1962, took over the armed forces in 1966 and seized presidential power in a military coup in 1971. During Amin's eight-year rule, an estimated 500,000 people disappeared or were killed. When Tanzanian troops and Ugandan dissidents stormed his palace in 1979, Amin fled to Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003.
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