Word: mengistu
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...shooting was shortly followed by an announcement of the execution of Brigadier General Teferi Benti, 55, Ethiopia's chief of state, and eight of his supporters in the Dergue. Significantly, the broadcasts took pains to mention that the two most powerful members of the Dergue, Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam and Lieut. Colonel Atnafu Abate, had survived the shooting "safe and sound." Here was a tip-off that the incident was not a coup against the military council itself but more of a power struggle within the Dergue between Mengistu and Atnafu and pro-Benti officers...
Methodical Ruthlessness. Later reports confirmed that suspicion. Radio Ethiopia broadcast a charge by the safe Mengistu that Benti and his aides had been killed because they were secret supporters of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party. The E.P.R.P. is a leftist underground group of students and businessmen trying to replace military rule with civilian government. Mengistu claimed he had discovered a 47-page master plan, belonging to Benti, that blueprinted the installation of the E.P.R.P. as a government to replace the "scientific socialism" of the military council...
Practically nothing is yet known about the 36-year-old Mengistu except that he speaks for the council, a band of 120 men who range in rank from private to major. Though the council seems to be divided over exactly how Ethiopia should be ruled, a majority of its members obviously favor sweeping social reform. As Ethiopian nationalists, they also want to put down by force the Eritrean guerrilla movement. Aman refused to authorize the council to execute prisoners as it saw fit, and was reluctant to send troop reinforcements to Eritrea because he felt the problem of secession should...
...Surrender. On the fatal Saturday, Aman remained inside his concrete bungalow, protected by a loyal detachment of Third Division troops. "I will never give myself up," he had told a relative a few days earlier. "I will die like a soldier." Some time after nightfall, Fourth Division troops under Mengistu's command attacked Aman's house with tanks, armored cars, bazookas and machine guns, and in the ensuing two-hour firefight the general was killed. Foreign observers in Addis Ababa speculated that certain members of the council may then have panicked and ordered the mass executions to take...
...replace General Aman, the council named Brigadier General Teferi Benti, 53, a career soldier who commanded the Eritrea-based Second Army Division. A hard-liner who can be trusted to follow the orders of Major Mengistu, General Teferi in his first order sent 7,000 troops to reinforce the Second Division, possibly for a showdown with the Eritrean secessionists...