"The suffering of the Ethiopian people was to some extent ameliorated by support from the Soviet Union, to whom Mengistu had offered up his country as a satellite state, although much of the Soviet aid was spent on military expenditure. When the Soviet Union began to flounder in the mid-1980s, the withdrawal of aid meant that Mengistu’s response to the devastating famine of 1984-5 was entirely ineffectual. When news of the famine first broke, the regime condemned it as enemy propaganda; but it was only international aid that prevented the death toll rising beyond the already shocking figure of 1 million. In 1991 Mengistu was finally deposed by the Ethiopian Revolutionary Democratic Front, a military coalition of opposition groups, as well as Eritreans and Tigrayans. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe. In December 2006, after a 12-year trial, an Ethiopian court convicted Mengistu in absentia of genocide — the death of untold millions — and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, the former dictator continues to live in comfort in Zimbabwe, on a large ranch."
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Simon Sebag Montefiore, Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2009), pp. 350-351
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mengistu_Haile_Mariam
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Mengistu Haile Mariam
1974 – 1991
Mengistu Haile Mariam (born 21 May 1937) was the communist leader of Ethiopia (1974-1991) during the Ethiopian Civil War, and the most prominent member of the Derg, the military junta responsible for the deposition of Haile Selassie. Since his overthrow, he has been granted asylum in Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe.
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