Birhanu Bayeh

Who is Birhanu Bayeh?

Birhanu Beyeh was a politician in Ethiopia. He was Foreign Minister during the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Prior to that, he was chairman of the Derg's committee for legal affairs.

Berhanu was born in Gojjam. In 1959 he entered Harar Military Academy as a cadet, and upon graduation was posted to the airborne division. Two years later he attended Haile Selassie University, where he studied law. In 1967 he became a lecturer at Harar Military Academy. As a captain, Berhanu joined the Derg as the representative of the Military Academy, where he became chairman, and was promoted to Major in April 1976. With Atnafu Abate, he managed to avoid the infamous Derg meeting of 3 February 1977, where a number of Derg leaders, including chairman Lieutenant General Tafari Benti, were killed in an ambush orchestrated by Mengistu Haile Mariam; the Ottaways assume that he "had apparently sided with Mengistu." At the beginning of the Ogaden War, when the Soviet Union attempted to mediate peace between Ethiopia and Somalia, Birhanu secretly met with a Somali delegation in Moscow. He led also the Ethopian deligation that facilitated the exchange of Ethopian and Somali prisoners of war in 1988.