Mengistu Haile Mariam
Mengistu Haile Mariam ruled Ethiopia for seventeen years and was convicted of genocide in absentia. Born in 1937, probably in Addis Ababa to a family of modest means, he joined the army young and trained in the United States twice. He was a major when the Derg — a committee of junior officers — formed in 1974 amid famine, mutiny and strikes, and deposed Emperor Haile Selassie that September. The emperor died the following year, almost certainly suffocated. Mengistu emerged as chairman by killing his rivals: some sixty officials of the old regime were shot in November 1974, and he personally shot or had shot the two men who had led the Derg before him. He declared Ethiopia a socialist state, nationalised land and industry, and aligned with the Soviet Union and Cuba, which supplied arms and advisers. From 1977 to 1978 he conducted the Red Terror against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party and other opponents. Bodies were left in the streets, families were charged for the bullets before being allowed to collect them, and estimates of the dead run from tens of thousands to half a million. He fought Somalia in the Ogaden and long insurgencies in Eritrea and Tigray. The famine of 1983-85 killed perhaps a million people. Drought was the trigger; his policies made it a catastrophe — forced resettlement of some six hundred thousand people, villagisation, restrictions on food movement and the use of aid as a weapon in the war zones. He fled to Zimbabwe in May 1991 as rebels reached Addis Ababa, and remains there, convicted and unextradited.
- Lived: 1937 CE – ?
- Nationality: Ethiopian
- Roles: head_of_state, dictator, military_leader
