The Desktop Digest of Despots and Dictators by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

Author:Gilbert Alter-Gilbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616088309
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM (1937 – ) ETHIOPIA

Under the reign of Ethiopia’s Mengistu bodies of murdered children were left in piles by the roadsides for the hyenas. Mengistu’s death squad was called “The Stranglers.” He had children jammed into trucks, ordered at gunpoint to dig their own graves, then machine-gunned by the assassination crews. Attaining power on the coattails of a junta led by a faction known as the Derg, Mengistu is alleged to have smothered Emperor Haile Selassie with a pillow to clear the path for Derg ascension. Mengistu’s African vampire state arrived at its zenith with the “Red Terror” campaign of genocide against anti-Derg factions— half a million persons purportedly died during this phase. As head of state, one of Mengistu’s first acts was to nationalize property belonging to his own grandmother, a circumstance said to have infuriated her. Out of sheer spite, Mengistu executed a number of ministers and high-ranking military officers, including a commanding general who disliked Mengistu and told him, when he was a young officer, that he would “chew him like chewing gum” and spare him no amount of suffering. He warned his adversaries that he would soon “make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!” Many of Mengistu’s victims were done in by the “Kebeles,” the neighborhood watch committees which served as local level security surveillance units Families had to pay the Kebeles a tax known as “the wasted bullet” to obtain the bodies of their loved ones. During the Ogaden War, when Mengistu heard that Ethiopian units were beginning to mutiny, Mengistu flew to the front and ordered mutineers bayoneted as “cowardly and counterrevolutionary elements. “ Mengistu’s irresponsible policies contributed to a vast Ethiopian famine to which more than a million succumbed. Mengistu crushed a coup attempted against him 1989, but was overwhelmed by rebel forces in 1991 and fled to Zimbabwe, where he enjoys asylum as a guest of President Mugabe. In 1995 he survived an assassination attempt in which his attacker was taken into custody by his bodyguards. In 2006, Mengistu was sentenced to death in absentia by Ethiopia’s High Court. He was found guilty of false imprisonment, homicide, and illegal confiscation of property. During his reign, the sight of students, government detractors, or rebel sympathizers hanging from lampposts was a routine spectacle Mengistu is alleged to have personally extinguished opponents by gunning them, down or garroting them, declaring that he was leading by example. It remains unclear whether Zimbabwe will permit his extradition.

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