Big Daddy's boy: Idi Amin's son jailed in Britain over Somali gang murder


Murder trial reveals how one of Ugandan dictator's 43 children became embroiled in violent feud between African youths in UK

Sandra Laville, crime correspondent
Saturday August 4, 2007
The Guardian


The son of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is serving a five-year jail sentence in Britain for his part in an African gang feud which culminated in the killing of a Somali student, it can be revealed today.
Faisal Wangita, 25, was one of up to 40 African youths who set upon 18-year-old Mahir Osman at a bus stop in Camden, north London, in a murderous attack which has highlighted how some young men from war-torn countries are fuelling gang violence in Britain.


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One senior police officer told the Guardian that more intervention was needed to stop large numbers of traumatised young men from civil wars in Africa forming street gangs. He said the level of violence used by these groups was extreme, involving not only knives, but ceremonial swords, guns and hammers.
Wangita is one of the youngest of Amin's estimated 43 children. His identity can now be released after the conclusion of the trials of gang members for Mr Osman's murder.

In May, Wangita was cleared of murder by an Old Bailey jury but found guilty of conspiracy to wound, conspiracy to possess offensive weapons and violent disorder in connection with the fatal attack. He was sentenced to five years' detention.

Three other gang members, Ismail Mohamed, 20, Liban Elmi, 20, and Hussain Ali Hussain, 17, all of whom are Somalis, were jailed for life for Mr Osman's murder.

Born in 1981 in Saudi Arabia, where Amin was living in exile, Wangita is believed to be the third child of the dictator's fifth and favourite wife, Sarah. Ms Amin, nicknamed "Suicide Sarah" after her time as a go-go dancer in the Ugandan Army's Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Regiment Band, lives with her two daughters and Wangita in Tottenham, north London.

She married Amin at a sumptuous wedding ceremony in Uganda in 1975 which cost an estimated £2m. The groom's best man was Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader.

Amin - who later called himself Field Marshal, King of Scotland and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa - cut the wedding cake with a sword in a ceremony which attracted international attention. But four years later the dictator's lavish lifestyle was abruptly brought to an end when he was overthrown by Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles after one of the bloodiest rules in African history.

Amin and some of his family fled first to Libya and then on to Saudi Arabia. In 1982, a year after Wangita's birth, Sarah Amin left her husband, taking her children with her, and sought political asylum in Germany, where she worked as a model.

After moving to London, she supported her children by running a cafe serving African dishes. In 1997 environmental health officials briefly closed down the restaurant in Forest Gate, east London, and Ms Amin was fined for poor kitchen hygiene.

Until his death in 2003, Amin lived in Jeddah, out of reach of human rights groups and the new Ugandan regime, both of which were keen to prosecute him for the deaths of an estimated 300,000 Ugandans.

Wangita grew up in north London, and fell in with a Somali gang known as the Tottenham Somalis. As a member of the gang he clashed with Mr Osman, who was associated with a rival gang known as the Centric Boys of Camden Town.

Mr Osman became a target for the Tottenham Somalis after the two groups met in a series of violent clashes in the weeks before the murder on January 28 last year.

In their last clash the Mr Osman, an engineering student, was stabbed more than 25 times and beaten with a hammer in an attack which lasted only a minute. The murder was condemned by the trial judge as an example of the gang culture "all too prevalent" on the streets of Britain.

Big Daddy's boy: Idi Amin's son jailed in Britain over Somali gang murder | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited