Mengistu Haile Mariam (, pronounced ; born 21 May 1937) is an Ethiopian politician who was the most prominent officer of the Derg, the Communist military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991. Mengistu has ethnic Konso ancestry from his mother's side and Amhara ancestry from his father. Effectively a dictator, he oversaw the Ethiopian Red Terror of 1977–1978, a campaign of repression against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party and other anti-Derg factions. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe in 1991 at the conclusion of the Ethiopian Civil War and remains there despite an Ethiopian court verdict finding him guilty in absentia of genocide. Estimates of the number of deaths for which he was responsible range from 500,000 to over 2,000,000.