The Story of Mohamed Amin

by Brian Tetley

  Breaking his cine camera down into several pieces and adding theodolites and plumb lines and other bits of professional survey equipment, Amin divided the camera and sound equipment among the three.

  ‘All the bits and pieces were scattered through my baggage and Eric’s. I was also carrying the sound equipment. We gave 20 rolls of Eastman colour negative to Brian, who put it in his brown suitcase.

  ‘We went through customs separately so that we wouldn’t look as if we were together. I was asked what I did. I said I was a surveyor and there was no hassle. He didn’t connect the bits of camera and tripod with filming and I was through.

  ‘Soon after, Eric was also out. Brian joined us about 10 minutes later and we all looked at each other and said, “Everything OK?” And Brian said, “No. We’ve lost the stock.” All 20 rolls of Eastman colour negative had been held. But he was given a receipt.

  ‘But the customs guys never connected the film with any of the equipment we were carrying. As there was not a lot we could do, we drove off to the Meridien Hotel. Immediately, I began to work on getting the stock. There was no point in finding Idi Amin if we had nothing to film him with.

  ‘One of my Visnews colleagues, Maurice Thompson, was in Riyadh. He was from the production division, which worked completely independent of the news division. But I was sure that he would help.

  ‘He was surprised to hear that I was in Jeddah but didn’t ask any questions. He gave me the name of a cameraman—who I realised later was actually working in the Ministry of Information—to call.

  ‘The cameraman didn’t have any Eastman colour film, but I still had to look for Idi Amin. Since it was a Friday, I thought the best place to look would be at the Friday prayers. But there are hundreds of mosques in Saudi Arabia and it was really a game of chance.’

  Once again, ‘Mo’s Luck’ came into play.

  ‘I hired a car with a Pakistani driver and asked him if he’d seen the Ugandan leader as he was a friend of mine. ‘He said Idi often went to Mecca, a 40-minute journey from Jeddah, which was a good place to look for him.

  ‘The Holy Mosque in Mecca is the biggest mosque in the world and has several gates. I asked the driver to drop me at one of them. But when I got there, the prayers had just finished and people were beginning to leave. Since it holds up to half a million people and because it was Friday prayers, it was pretty full.

  ‘I went inside anyway and looked around but I couldn’t see him. While I was there, however, I decided to perform Umrah, which is the Lesser Pilgrimage, and I started my prayers. I performed Umrah, circling the Kab’ah seven times.

  After praying, Mo looked up and recognised, sitting close by, one of Idi Amin’s bodyguards. He also recognised Mo. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve just come to pray. How’s the big man?’

  ‘Well, you just missed him. He was here a few minutes ago.’

  Amin said he would like to pay his respects. Could he see him later that day?

  ‘Give me your number. I will tell him you’re here. I’m sure he would like to see you.’

  ‘At least now I knew my information was correct. When I left the mosque and got into the car, the driver told me, “Your friend Idi Amin came out two minutes after you went in.”

  ‘Brian and Eric were waiting at the Meridien. There was still nothing doing on the film side. I told Brian to leave it to me and not get involved.’

  A little later, an angry Thompson called Amin.

  ‘Tell me, what are you doing in Saudi Arabia?’

  ‘I’m just here doing a job for news division.’

  ‘I’ve just been summoned by the minister for information to explain what a Visnews cameraman is doing in Jeddah.’

  The government cameraman had reported Mo’s call to his superiors.

  ‘I told Maurice I was just checking on a story. In fact, I didn’t even have any camera equipment in my room, which was true. It was all locked away in Eric’s room.

  Thompson insisted that the cameraman should tell him what he was doing. When Mo replied, he hit the roof.

  ‘Here I am trying to sell a million dollar contract to the Saudi Government on behalf of Visnews and you’re going to blow it and have us all arrested.’

  ‘Sorry, Maurice. I know we work for the same company but I think you had better talk to head office. I am here to do a job and I’m going to do the best I can.’

  ‘If you don’t leave Saudi Arabia tonight I will have you arrested.’

  ‘Maurice. You’re not going to sell me down the drain are you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to sell you down the drain.’ The telephone call gave Mohamed Amin an even greater sense of urgency. He went straight to the Kodak office in Jeddah to look for Eastman negative colour film. Now time was vital. It was another instance of ‘Mo’s Luck’.

  The manager said, ‘We never stock this film. But somebody ordered 20 rolls, which arrived here two weeks ago, after he left the country.’ It was cheaper than the same stock in London.

  Soon after, he had a call from one of Idi Amin’s sons, who came over to the hotel.

  ‘We drove back to Idi Amin’s hideout and I was then taken in for a traditional reunion, an embrace and kiss on the cheek, and we sat drinking tea.

  ‘He was delighted to see me but when I asked him for an interview, he said he could not do it. He was a guest of the king. I stayed on, however, and continued our conversation. It went on and on. I kept repeating my request. People in Uganda felt let down that Idi Amin had not spoken since leaving Uganda and the world was waiting to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Finally, in the early hours of the morning, this got through and he said he would give me an interview “for one minute only”.

  ‘I immediately went to get Brian and Eric. Idi Amin had said he would not go outside the room but we had no lights. So we just drove through the market, which was open around the clock, and bought two “sun guns,” which are readily available in Jeddah at throwaway prices.

  ‘When we got back, Idi Amin was dressed in a safari suit. I told Brian he could forget about a one-minute interview because “once he’s got the lights on him and the camera is going, you can ask as many questions as you want.” In the end, we had a one-hour interview, a world exclusive.

  ‘When we came out, I said we should go straight to the airport and take the first flight out no matter where it was going. ‘I took the film and handed all the equipment to Eric and told him to catch another separate flight, wherever it might be going.

  ‘We headed straight for the airport. Fortunately, the first flight was to London. I told Brian to take the receipt and collect the twenty rolls that had been confiscated. He did and so we had our unused film as well. The exposed film was in the suitcase. It was too risky to hand-carry, especially with the security check. I thought we would have problems, and at that time, there was no security on the checked baggage.’ Thirer caught the next flight to Karachi—two hours later.

  During the flight, Brian Barron showed Mohamed Amin the draft of a press release announcing the discovery of Idi Amin’s whereabouts by Brian Barron of the BBC and Mohamed Amin of Visnews. ‘I didn’t ask him to write it and it sounded OK and I told him, fine, and went back to sleep.’

  They arrived at Heathrow around six in the morning. In the baggage hall, Barron phoned his editor. He came back asking for the film. ‘No. The film goes to Visnews. It’s not the BBC’s film.’

  ‘But we should have it.’

  ‘The BBC can’t process Eastman colour. Visnews can and we’ve got a 24-hour laboratory.’

  Amin kept his film and they went their separate ways. Mo hired a car and drove straight to Visnews’ Park Royal headquarters, where the film was processed immediately. At that stage, he didn’t think that anybody in Visnews realised just how big the story was.

  Checking in at a hotel, he cleaned up and drove back to Visnews as the BBC issued the following press release:

  935226 TVNEWS G

  Amin talks exclu
sively to BBC TV news. Press Release

  June 2, 1980

  Idi Amin has reappeared and BBC television news will run in the nine o’clock news on BBC-1 Tomorrow (Tuesday June 3) an exclusive interview with the Ugandan Dictator.

  For the first time since the overthrow of his regime 14 months ago, Idi Amin talks to a journalist—Brian Barron, BBC TV news African correspondent, the Royal Television Society Television Reporter of the Year.

  In a joint operation with Visnews, the London-based international newsfilm agency, Barron tracked down and eventually met Idi Amin at his secret refuge in an Arab country.

  Barron said, ‘It was all very bizarre. Amin looked fitter and younger than when I last saw him—that was two years ago when he was in power. He would not allow us to take pictures of the four sons he had with him—Maclaren, Mckenzie, Campbell, and Moses—and before the cameras began to turn, we conversed to the background music of Idi Amin’s personal cassette—recording of the pipes and drums of the Black Watch.’

  Barron added, ‘Amin insisted that precise details of his whereabouts should remain secret.’ Amin told Barron, ‘To tell you the truth, I enjoyed the war, the decisions, the command, though I’m very sorry about those who lost their lives.’

  In a wide-ranging interview, Amin says he still sees himself as the saviour of Uganda, and dismisses reports of atrocities.

  For further information: Peter Rosier,

  News and Current Affairs Publicity,

  BBC Television Centre, London W.12

  Tel: 743 3000 ext. 7726/7

  Not one mention of Mohamed Amin.

  The London evening newspapers carried the story of Barron ‘scooping the world’. Visnews staff were disgusted. Managing Editor Tom Hudson, now head of news, also badly upset, assured everyone that it would be sorted out and urged the news staff to leave it to the management.

  But next day still, the morning papers told how that night’s BBC Nine 0’Clock news would feature ‘Barron’s’ exclusive interview with Idi Amin. Driving to Visnews, Mohamed Amin tuned in the car radio to hear Barron ‘coming out loud and clear on how he’d tracked down Idi Amin over six months. You’d have thought he’d been alone in the desert and across the poles. He came on like Lawrence of Arabia.’ Seething, Amin stormed into Tom Hudson’s office.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Tom had heard Barron as well. Furious, Amin said:

  ‘Just give me the film. I’ll take it and we’ll forget all about this.’

  Just then, Mo’s editor-in-chief Bob Kearsley rang Hudson to ask if he knew where Amin was as the BBC wanted photographs of Barron with Idi Amin.

  ‘Tell him to fuck off,’ Mo told Tom.

  Hudson handed the telephone to the Nairobi newsman.

  ‘Tell him yourself.’

  An ex-BBC man, Kearsley didn’t understand Amin’s anger.

  ‘For God’s sake, Bob, this is a Visnews story and we’re letting the BBC walk all over us. It’s an absolute lie that Barron got this story. It’s totally untrue. We did it and it’s ours.’

  He remembers that when he left Hudson’s office, he said he was going to go to ITN and tell the whole story. ‘But it’s not something I would have done.’

  Mo returned to his hotel pursued by telephone calls from Kearsley asking him to appear at a BBC press conference at Television Centre that afternoon. He hung up. Kearsley rang back.

  ‘Can we sort this out?’

  ‘No, they’re telling lies. If I go to the press conference I’ll tell them it’s lies. It’s not a BBC story.’ Finally, however, Amin reluctantly agreed. In the newsroom, Barron was too busy attending to requests for interviews from radio stations around the world to do much more than raise a hand in greeting. Amin was introduced to the BBC editor who came round the desk and shook his hand.

  ‘Congratulations Mo. It’s a fantastic story.’

  The cameraman stared at him.

  ‘Don’t congratulate me. I didn’t do anything. It’s all Brian Barron.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Basically you’re lying. Don’t distort the facts. If I go to the press conference, I’ll say so.’

  The editor confessed a wrong had been done. That night, before the exclusive was shown on BBC, pictures of Barron and Mohamed appeared on the screen to introduce it.

  There was a sequel. The London Sunday Times report of the Visnews discontent, in its June 15 edition, ended, ‘The BBC, the major Visnews shareholder, is unrepentant and says, “If anyone suggests a cameraman should front a TV programme, sorry, that’s not on. We employ journalists, and very good ones for that.”’

  Clearly the BBC at that time had no problem deciding who was more important to television news—the cameraman who got the story or the front man who tagged on to his coattail.

  Amin was furious. But he had little time to fret. In Nairobi, he was immersed in the Cradle of Mankind book. He invited Richard Leakey, director of Kenya’s National Museums, whose own book on the origins of the human race, The Making of Mankind, was then in the final stages of production, to write the foreword, and sent him a copy of the manuscript. This had been revised to Mo’s satisfaction, but he felt some pictures were missing. The book, he decided, needed aerial photographs.

  Operation Drake, the adventure voyage run by Colonel John Blashford Snell, which involved youths from all over the world in worthy assignments in far-flung places, including Kenya, supplied the answer. The team, which arrived in August 1980, was going to Sibiloi National Park, Lake Turkana. The expedition’s transport included a 33-year-old museum piece, a Beaver aircraft of the British Army’s Air Corps based at Aldershot, England, which had been rehabilitated for Operation Drake. It was piloted by two veterans whom Mo christened ‘Biggles I’ and ‘Biggles II’. Both were near their 50s.

  He requisitioned the Beaver to report on the adventure safari and to do his aerials of Lake Turkana. Though Cradle of Mankind was virtually finished, he wanted me to go with him to get the feel of the place.

  The Beaver had a simple drop window, which was pulled up and down by a leather strap. With no safety belt and perched on his upturned camera case, Amin sat by this, leaning out whenever he thought there might be a picture. Slowly, the burning waste of Suguta Valley receded and we were over the lake. Ahead, over the pilots’ shoulders, I could make out the shape of South Island, where two of Sir Vivien Fuchs’ 1934 exploration team had vanished without trace. Not a place, I thought, to make a forced landing.

  Suddenly, the single engine spluttered and died. Winking at me, Mo said, ‘That’s why they didn’t let you carry your beer on this trip. It would have been wasted at the bottom of the lake.’ Biggles I and Biggles II, who between them accounted for about 60 years of flying, were agitated, hands flying over buttons, switches, levers, eyes intent. The Beaver drifted on, only the rush of the slipstream through the open window could be heard. Unconcerned, Amin went on taking pictures.

  As the Beaver drifted back over the land, he suggested jokingly that they put it down on one of the beaches. Minutes later, after jiggling the wings, fuel flowed again into the engine and it restarted. But on the last leg to the landing strip at Alia Bay, the engine spluttered out again and we came in wide and swift, the plane’s shadow stampeding a herd of zebra grazing on the strip. That photograph made an impressive two-page spread in the book.

  The day he returned, he was off to the Rift Valley to photograph a Maasai village, manyatta, for another book, The Last of the Maasai (published in 1987). The following day, in Nairobi, he was discussing progress on the text of two other books: Ivory Crisis, by Ian Parker, and Run Rhino Run, by Esmond and Chryssee Bradley Martin, with his pictures. By now, Camerapix had a regular stand at the main event in the publishing calendar, the Frankfurt Book Fair, where later in 1980, he showed colour proofs and the manuscript of Cradle of Mankind to potential buyers. The English edition was taken by Chatto & Windus, the American edition by the Overlook Press.

  The sale concluded, h
e at once decided to start on another book. Journey through Kenya was conceived with the idea of publication in time for the OAU Heads of State summit in Nairobi in June 1981. Time was critical, so at the end of November, Willetts and I began a five-week safari around Kenya.

  It ended on New Year’s Eve 1981, which Amin was spending with his family at a friend’s house in Westlands, three miles out of town. As they celebrated, the walls of the house shook with the force of a tremendous explosion.

  ‘I immediately telephoned the police,’ he recalls. ‘They had heard this explosion, too, but didn’t know where it was. I telephoned the fire station and they said they had heard it as well but didn’t know where it was from. I phoned the Nation newspaper and they heard it, too, but didn’t know where it was.

  ‘I called the fire station again and they said they thought it was at the Norfolk Hotel, the capital’s oldest and finest five-star hotel. Immediately, I rang the Norfolk number. It was dead. I then looked in the directory and there was another number. For a call box.

  ‘I called this and somebody lifted the receiver and just said, “Please help. Please help. We’re dying here. I’ve just lost my leg. Please help.”

  ‘I rushed to my office, collected my cameras, and went to the Norfolk. It was gruesome, shocking. A whole wing had been blown apart and there were bodies everywhere, wounded, lying around. The restaurant above which the bomb had exploded was shattered and the place was ablaze.

  ‘The police were there and the fire brigade and soon afterwards, the fire engines from the airport arrived. But it took hours to bring the fire under control. I filmed the bodies being brought out of the restaurant and the wounded, some with hands and legs blown off, being taken to hospital.

  ‘It was learned later that this bomb had been planted by a Palestinian organisation apparently as revenge against the owners, the Jewish Block family, who helped the arrangements for the Israeli raid on Entebbe, but the truth will perhaps never be known.’

  Amin took the finished manuscript and colour transparencies of Journey through Kenya to a Kenya Government ministry with the suggestion that they should buy presentation copies for delegates to the upcoming Organisation of African Unity Conference in Nairobi. But nobody was prepared to back the enthusiasm they voiced and he soon abandoned the idea.