Hard not to have a twinge of sympathy for this guy, even though he participated in a horrific crime.

AP has the story Idi Amin’s son jailed in Britain.

Amin was an iconic figure from the 70s who taught the world just how barbarically brutal a man could be. He was, perhaps, the first great war lord coming out of Africa to gain wide-spread infamy. His loathsome dictatorial rule in Uganda shocked on any number of levels, one of which was his horrific proliferation of progeny, the brutal Mr. Wangita being one of them.

How, one wonders, did Britain open its arms to anyone in Amin’s family?

Some details from the article:

Faisal Wangita, 25, was part of a 40-strong gang that attacked Somali teenager Mahir Osman, 18, in a busy street in north London in January 2006.

Osman was stabbed 20 times, attacked with baseball bats, bottles and hammers, punched and kicked and died within a minute, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said. The attack was caught on camera.

The jury was not told that Wangita was Amin’s son because it was felt it would prejudice his case. But they were later told of his parentage by Judge Stephen Kramer, who described him as a “serious risk to the public.”

Amin settled in Saudi Arabia after his overthrow in 1979, and died there in August 2003. Official papers showed Wangita was born in Uganda but he told police he was born in Saudi Arabia.

Amin, a former military cook, seized power in Uganda in a January 1971 coup. His eight-year rule was noted for human rights abuses, political repression, extra-judicial killings and the expulsion of Asians from the central African country. There is no exact figure for the number of people killed during his presidency — estimates range between 50,000 and 500,000.

The dictator’s life was featured in last year’s film “The Last King Of Scotland,” for which actor Forest Whitaker won an Academy Award. Amin had 40 officially recorded children from seven official wives. Nothing is known about Wangita’s mother.