There are unsubstantiated reports, that there was a final rupture between President Mengistu Haile Mariam and the Patriarch following the napalm and cluster bombing of rebel held areas of Eritrea and the Tigray Region in the north in 1988.
An Amhara, Almayahu 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.
A member of the faction opposed to Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, at a February 1977 meeting between Mengistu and his opponents, who included not only Asrat but chairman General Tafari Benti and a number of leading members of the Derg, gunfire erupted leaving both Asrat and General Tafari, as well as six other leaders of the Derg dead.
Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam, one of the major supporters of the SPLA, had recently been overthrown by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.
In 1993, Wolde was arrested on the accusation that he participated in a Red Terror execution during the regime of the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
A member of the faction opposed to Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, Mogus was appointed to chair a committee to reorganize the Derg.
Haile Selassie | Haile Gebrselassie | Mengistu Haile Mariam | Yohannes Haile-Selassie | Haile Gerima | Amba Mariam | Almayahu Haile | Mariam Tsitsishvili | Mariam Naficy | Mariam Matossian | Mariam Baouardy | Margaret Haile | Mahisente Habte Mariam | Haile Fida | Agnes Mariam de la Croix |
According to Hirut Abebe-Jiri, an activist involved in preserving and documenting atrocities while Mengistu Haile Mariam ruled the country, and other women, Kelbessa directly oversaw their torture, and demanded to know whether they were members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, then fighting the government in the Ethiopian Civil War.