Captain Alemayehu Haile (died 3 February 1977) was a member of the Derg, the military junta that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987.
An Amhara, Alemayehu was a graduate of the Dina Police College in Addis Ababa and of Haile Selassie University (now Addis Ababa University); his education leads the Ottaways to suspect that this was a factor in his feud with Mengistu Haile Mariam. He comment that he "was certainly no moderate and as remembered by his university professors as a very articulate, argumentative student who believed in radical policies as the only means to bring even moderate change to a feudal country such as Ethiopia." [1] At the time of the Ethiopian Revolution, Alemayehu was a member of the Ethiopian police force.
He was a key member of the Derg and was chairman of the Committee for Administrative Affairs. [2] After the reorganization of the Derg announced on 29 December 1976, Alemayehu became Secretary-General, "a post with such ill-defined limits that it could confer vast powers." [3] In short, Alemayehu Haile appeared at this point to be the most powerful member of the Derg, more powerful than his rival Mengistu.
However, according to LaFort, Almayahu made a critical mistake by underestimating or even despising Mengistu; "it was out of the question that he would passively accept his personal elimination and the defeat of his views." [4] And the events of 3 February 1977 put Mengistu back in control. At a meeting between Mengistu and his opponents, who included not only Alemayehu Haile but chairman General Tafari Benti and a number of leading members of the Derg, military soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Asfaw rounded them up and arrested them. He was summarily executed with the others after a short while. Mengistu afterwards broadcast on Radio Ethiopia that Almayahu and his dead compatriots had attempted a "fascist coup d'etat in the capital identical to what had taken place in Chile", and labeling them "fifth columnists" of the Ethiopian Democratic Union and Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party rebel groups. [5]
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Mengistu Haile Mariam is an Ethiopian former politician and former army officer who was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991 and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia from 1984 to 1991. He was the chairman of the Derg, the socialist military junta that governed Ethiopia, from 1977 to 1987, and the president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) from 1987 to 1991.
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Haile Fida was an Ethiopian politician and a leader of the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement. His most significant accomplishment was drafting the Program for the National Democratic Revolution on behalf of the Derg.
Lieutenant Colonel Asrat Desta of Ethiopia was the Chairman of Information and Public Relation Committee of the PMAC of Ethiopia. He died on February 3, 1977, together with Head of State Brigadier General Teferi Banti and five other officers in a coup d'état carried out against them by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Captain Mogus Wolde Mikael was an Eritrean military officer who was a member of the Derg, the military junta that ruled Ethiopia.
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On 12 December 2006, the Federal Supreme Court found guilty 77 top Derg officials accused by the government of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) over the Red Terror (1976–1978). The head of the Derg, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who fled to Zimbabwe, and other 22 Derg members were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment on 11 January 2007.
This list details about chronological aspect of the Derg, the military junta that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987 by decade.
The following is history of the Red Terror in Ethiopia, a political repression launched by the military junta Derg from 1976 to 1978, which resulted more than 10,000 deaths.
On 12 September 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army, a Soviet-backed military junta that consequently ruled Ethiopia as the Derg until 1991.