JEDDAH, Aug 10: Former dictator Idi Amin has received death threats at a Saudi hospital where he has been critically ill for weeks, a medical source said on Sunday.

Staff at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah got the threats by telephone on Saturday, prompting mangers to post a permanent guard in Amin’s room and another at the entrance to intensive care, the source said.

“Security measures were dramatically increased in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital where Idi Amin is staying as a result of several death threats,” the source said. He gave no details on the threats.

Sources said last week that Amin was in a “near-death-condition”, and the source said on Sunday he was now expected to die within days.

“Idi Amin’s condition has deteriorated as sepsis has set in, compounding earlier multiple organ system failure. He is still hooked up to a life-support machine...(and) the prognosis is he will die within days rather than weeks,” the source said.

Amin, in his late 70s, has been in exile, chiefly in Saudi Arabia, since his ouster from his East African homeland in 1979.—Reuters