Mengistu Haile Mariam

Mengistu Haile Mariam , 1937-, military ruler of Ethiopia (1974-91). Mengistu, an army officer, participated prominently in Emperor Haile Selassie 's overthrow (1974). Emerging through violence as preeminent military ruler by 1977, he sought Soviet aid, established a socialist People's Republic and fought off Somali incursions and Eritrean rebels. He was elected president in 1987. Regional rebellions increased while Soviet aid receded amid economic deterioration. Mengistu abandoned socialism, but unable to mobilize military resistance, he was forced to flee to Zimbabwe in 1991. He was tried (1994-2006) in absentia for genocide by an Ethiopian court, convicted, and sentenced (2007) to life in prison, but in 2008 Ethiopia's supreme court overruled the lower court and imposed the death sentence.

Mengistu, Haile Mariam (1937– ) Ethiopian soldier and politician; President of Ethiopia (1987–91). An army officer, Mengistu first came to prominence in 1974, when the army staged a successful coup against the regime of Emperor HAILE SELASSIE. Appointed acting chairman of the provisional army council, he became head of state in a second coup in 1977. With aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba, he made Ethiopia into a Marxist-Leninist republic, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition. He imposed agricultural collectivization and mass deportations. He pursued the war against the breakaway province of ERITREA, building his forces into the largest army in Africa. In 1984–85 his policies exacerbated one of the worst periods of famine and drought to affect the Horn of Africa, during which many thousands of Ethiopians died. In 1987 Mengistu introduced civilian rule; having banned all but his Workers' Party, he took the Presidency unopposed. After surviving one attempted coup in 1989, his downfall and exile came in May 1991, when a coalition of resistance movements from Eritrea and Tigray, which had made steady advances since the mid-1980s, overran Addis Ababa. In 1995 Mengistu was found guilty in absentia of genocide in his native country.